Mars Rover
The Problem
French Aerospace Engineers COMAT were tasked with producing the housing for the 2020 Mars Rover’s SUPERCAM. The SUPERCAM is an incredibly powerful tool that will be used to find out more about the surface of the planet Mars. Its key roles will be to research elemental composition and provide high resolution images of the red planet.
With the main body of the instrument being made from aluminium (and then gold plated), tapped holes were very difficult to produce. The customer had always used the traditional tanged inserts in the past. There were no fundamental issues with the function of these components however installation was time consuming because of tang break off and retrieval. This was exacerbaited by the fact many inserts needed to be installed in hard to reach places.
The Solution
