Spacebots

Are you ready to join the Mars Rover scientists and programmers to design the next mission? This Summer, we’ll be lifting off and planning a journey to outer space to mine rare minerals from a local asteroid! You’ll learn about all the systems and components for designing this mission from ground up with focused attention on the design of the actual rover. Working in a highly diverse team, students will be tasked with designing the control systems for the mission, while others will be charged with designing and programming the rover robot that will be exploring the surface of the asteroid, and others will be overseeing the subsystems and instruments of the rover that will collect precious minerals. Let’s get ready to blast off!

In this Studio, students will analyze and design a comprehensive asteroid mining mission including the design, engineering and programming of a robotic rover while learning about the process of retrieving extraterrestrial resources. Each student will each assume the role of a system engineer, focused on the R&D, design, engineering and programming of a subsystem of the mission including launch, entry, descent, landing, deployment, lander structure, rover design, systems controls, rover intelligence, surface operations, instrument design, mining, and energy collection. Together, students will experience the iterative and exploratory process of engineering a complex system. We will start with basic lessons on chemistry, rocketry, and orbital mechanics, then focus our energy on the rover design including basics of robotics (sensors, actuators, microcontrollers), physics, and programming. We will end with a mission that is out of this world!

Register here!

Focus Skills/Subjects/Technologies:

Design