Lunar Lego Landing

  BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Stuff

By Rachel Makabi
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

With motorized LEGO models of rovers that brave large drops and
climb mountainous steeps to find ice on the moon, engineering
students are preparing for the next phase in space exploration.

Students are building these rovers ““ remote controlled
vehicles that are sent on missions to space ““ as part of
their space technology hardware design class to prepare for
aerospace engineering missions in the future.

“It makes me want to go into aerospace engineering even
more than before,” said Chester Lin, a fourth-year mechanical
aerospace engineering student.

“If you just sit in the classroom and write equations all
day, you lose half the picture and this is the way to see the whole
picture.”

  BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Stephen
Ringler, a student in Space Technology Hardware Design,
tinkers with the treads on the rover he and other classmates
built.

During the course of the quarter, students go through the
process of an actual space mission, from gaining approval for their
designs to having their rovers survive a four-foot drop onto a
simulated moon that is built on the inside of a laboratory.

The professor and teaching assistant created a terrain of
mountains and craters for the moon using sand, tarps and an old
sandbox.

One of the biggest challenges of the project, according to
teaching assistant Rocky Khullar, is to get students to use their
classroom knowledge to create something.

“People have experience with equations and number
punching, but in an experiment like this you have to be very
creative,” Khullar said.

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After getting their designs approved, students publicized their
ideas, said course instructor and Aerospace Corporation member Todd
Mosher.

They also explained the science behind their projects to
elementary and high school students, he continued.

Afterwards, they began building the rover using Legos, cameras,
a computer chip and thermal, motion and optical censors that will
search for the ice.

Previous classes made the students use raw materials and build
from scratch, but Mosher said the entire class will use LEGOs to
focus on the design aspect of the mission.

Students conducted several tests to ensure their design ideas
would work, Mosher said, adding that the designs have evolved and
changed a lot since the original proposals were made.

For several weeks, Lin said he and his classmates went to Santa
Monica Pier to test how their rovers would land and move on
sand.

In order to be as realistic as possible, the class recreates the
process of building a rover. They must also deal with the pressures
of having a failed mission.

Many expensive space operations, like the $600 million Mars
Observer which scientists assume crashed in 1993, put lots of funds
to waste and left several scientists out of work, Mosher said.

“If they don’t get past the landing, they are dust.
It’s like real life,” Mosher said.

“We don’t want to be too harsh but they should also
understand the consequences.”