This study addresses the issues of high operating resistance, incomplete separation in ascending transport chains, and significant wear and tear in existing licorice harvesters. A new licorice harvester has been designed that incorporates a lift chain conveyor separation device, enabling excavation, separation, collection, and centralized stacking to be completed in a single operation. The paper describes the harvester's overall structure and provides detailed analyses and designs of its key components, including the digging shovel, roller screen, conveying and separating screens, and soil-crushing roller. Multi-body dynamics (MBD) and discrete element models (DEM) for licorice and soil were developed, and the entire harvesting process was simulated using the coupled DEM-MBD method to analyze the trajectory and speed of the licorice. Field tests confirmed that the conveyor separation screen operates smoothly, effectively separates licorice rhizomes from soil, and minimizes damage to the licorice. Field test results show a net digging rate of 96.2%, a damage rate of 4.3%, and an average digging depth of 580 mm. The operational indexes meet the standards for harvesting root and stem Chinese herbal medicines. The machine operates stably and exhibits exceptional conveying and separating effects, demonstrating its suitability for mechanized harvesting of root and stem herbs.

Lunar IceCube is a 6U CubeSat that is designed to detect and observe lunar volatiles from a highly inclined orbit. This spacecraft, equipped with a low-thrust engine, is expected to be deployed from the upcoming Exploration Mission-1 vehicle. However, significant uncertainty in the deployment conditions for secondary payloads impacts both the availability and geometry of transfers that deliver the spacecraft to the lunar vicinity. A framework that leverages dynamical systems techniques is applied to a recently updated set of deployment conditions and spacecraft parameter values for the Lunar IceCube mission, demonstrating the capability for rapid trajectory design.