“SPACE SPEOLOGIST”
MEMBERS
Victor Uriel Ozuna Hurtado, Jorge Félix Jiménez Briones, Aurora Silvana García Avalos, Guadalupe Amor Lerma, Bernardo Jael Lizárraga Aguilar, Mario Alberto Ruiz Ibarra, Amairany Carolina Ramírez Cruz, Karla Adana Guadalupe Corona Polanco, Félix Nicolas Gutiérrez Beltrán, José Antonio Del Ángel Ríos, Juan Carlos Arriaga Oliva, Juan Carlo Petrina Bernal, Edgar Veliz Mendoza.
THE CHALLENGE
You are the astronaut/robotic mission lead tasked with bringing valuable specimens from the Moon back to Earth for further study. How will you evaluate lunar samples quickly and effectively before or while still on the mission? How will you differentiate samples of potential scientific value from less interesting material?
POTENTIAL CONSIDERATIONS
For your solution, devise a simulation of a human/robotic mission to the Moon that brings back only the most valuable specimens, and not "extra" material. Be sure to articulate how you are defining “value” in your mission – what purpose do the samples serve, and what characteristics make them “valuable” to you? Remember that value is not necessarily a monetary value, but the collection and return of any sample to Earth does have a cost to it, so your task is to be sure that you are working with the most important samples you can collect.
Some examples of solutions include (but are NOT LIMITED to):
Your solutions will be evaluated for the following metrics:
Here are some tips to consider as you develop your solutions:
DEVELOPMENT
In this project we will be developing an improvement for a Rover robot, which will be responsible for the exploration and collection of minerals in caves or places inaccessible to Rovers as craters. To this improvement we decided to call it: “O.T.E.C.” (Objeto Terrestre Explorador de Crateres) which means crater explorer earth object This improvement consists of a hybrid robot based on the physiology of a snake since a snake can maneuver better than rover in narrow and rocky spaces due to its agility, this Rover improvement will be implemented from a gear system. The Rover will have a winch where the snake will remain, the snake will have its own movement through a fabric that we are designing from electro-active polymers which will be deformed with an electric charge, so that the material emulates the movement of the muscles of a snake, which will allow us to move.
O.T.E.C.
That is our innovation to solve the problematic of extracting the mineral from a narrow path or out of the reaching places. Now we will be talking about the extraction for an exhaustive analysis of the mineral. Since this is a new improvement for the Rover, we do not know exactly how many time it will be saved, because there no other rover that could explore a cave or crater yet. Other opportunity area will be that an astronaut won’t be having to risk his life exploring cave due to radiation or possible cuts in the suit.
The Rover will place the samples in a capsule located between two exoskeletal systems to maintain inertia (each one will contain 500 grams of minerals in order to save some money) back to the spacecraft, it will be responsible for storing all samples for be able to analyze them Inside there will be a density meter to know when the capsule is filled, OTEC will be connected by a long power cable that will always keep you in control of the rover. When the Rover is filled with samples, it analyzes them within itself, and then discards them.
The collected data will be sent to the NASA database, and the molecular reader inside the rover will be depressurized inside so as not to affect the following collections.
Where does the idea come from, where did it originate?
This idea it came with the finality of exploring caves in mars, and it came through a lot of changes since in the beginning we were thinking about doing a drone that fly into a cave to explore, but we had a rain of ideas that help us to decide taking the physiology of the snake to make a real innovation.
What passion motivated you?
I’m going to be talking for everyone when I’m said that what move us to join in this project it was the love for the science.
What problem are you solving? For what?
We are solving the problem of collecting samples in places never before explored and with greater speed
With what purpose?
The purpose is to try to fully comprehend what are the minerals in the moon also to see how possible is to achieve this in mars
What are the opportunities?
With this Rover we have the opportunity of approach to this material that were out of reach due to the technology in this time
How does your idea work?
through an exoskeleton similar to that of snakes, we will put electroactive polymers between the vertebrae, density sensors, cameras and drills.
IT IS POSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE IT! JUSTIFICATION
By cause of what we have in mind is not out of logic and its just an improvement to a Rover that already exist, and we are taking as an example the winch of a jeep, but the cable will be filo guided.
We believe that this project has a lot of potential an is a big and great innovation in the view of the NASA seeing that is looking forward to going back to the moon 2024.