Features of the Transportation Capsules with the Ground by Means of the Inflatable Shell in the Suction Head of the SPACECRAFT "PhobosGrunt"

One of the most interesting trends of space research is a delivery of the soil samples of the investigated object to the Earth. In delivering the soil samples the most important stage is a stage to pick-and-place it in the transportation (returned) capsule.The aim of this work is to develop a reloading device of the suction head to provide picking up the soil of Mars’ satellite “Phobos”. This device is designed for use as a part of the spacecraft "Phobos-Grunt".The presented device belongs to a manipulating type of devices and consists of a manipulator and a handling device. The manipulator provides picking up the Phobos surface soil samples and their placing into a capsule, which is in the block of the handling device. Upon the capsule has been filled it is reloaded from the soil intake area to the area of capsule transfer, which is provided by means of a compactly piled gas-filled shell.In operation there is a number of restrictions. The tolerable capsule opening size to take-in the soil samples can be up to 10 mm with 1003 cm free soil capsule volume. When picking up the soil the magnitude of the axial force of the manipulator is restricted.The paper considers the operating principle of the reloading device and describes the handling device design and method to calculate its characteristics. It also presents the designing results of the handling device and its basic characteristics. The issues of the suction head reliability are also discussed.There is the Russian Federation patent for the invention №2413660 of the developed device.</p