Q&A with spacecraft engineer Abbie Hutty

What does your job involve?

I am the structures engineer on the ExoMars mission- so I co-ordinate all of the specialists- Design Office, Stress, Dynamic Analysis, Materials and Processes, Manufacture, etc – to come up with a Rover Structure that meets all the requirements on it. (It is a combined technical and man/project management role)

What is the big challenge you have to address? 

Our biggest challenges structurally are loads and thermal case. We hit the ground at 15g axially (plus 10g lateral) and have individual unit load cases up to 180g, and the landing case occurs at a temperature of -50 degrees C. Thermally once on the planet we are exposed to night time temperature of -125 degrees C, and can have daytime temperatures (when we are expected to be fully functional) as low as 85 degrees (or as high as 5 degrees).

These ranges obviously lead to massive problems with differential thermal expansion in the structure, but also in the electronics and exposed mechanisms, such as the drive motors. We also have to constantly heat our rover to prevent everything from just freezing.