The project Europa Explorer (EurEx) of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence is developing systems for future exploration missions to the Jovian moon Europa at an early stage. EurEx aims to provide the systems or parts of them for real missions in the future. One of those systems is the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle DeepLeng which shall explore the ocean of the icy moon.
The aim of this master thesis is to design a Launch and Recovery System (LARS) for DeepLeng. This will lift DeepLeng into a vertical position, launch it vertically into the water and align it horizontally underwater. The recovery part is neglected in this thesis. The LARS is designed for field testing in Abisko, Sweden while the deployment on Europa is incidental. Among others, the aspects Environmental safety, weather resistance and water resistance are considered.
The design is based on an analysis of the current state of the art. This is followed by a categorisation of already existing systems into several concepts and their evaluation. The most suitable concept is developed in detail. For that CAD software is used to design components and FEM simulations check their applicability. The result is a detailed concept for a LARS that provides the mentioned functions under the given circumstances.