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NASA's Lunabotics Challenge
Since 2010, NASA’s Lunabotics competition has provided college students from around the
NASA's Lunabotics Challenge
Since 2010, NASA’s Lunabotics competition has provided college students from around the country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...
an opportunity to engage with the NASA Systems Engineering process to design and build a robotic
Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...
Lunar
Lunar most commonly means "of or relating to the Moon".
Lunar may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Lunar'' (series), a series of video games
* "Lunar" (song), by David Guetta
* "Lunar", a song by Priestess from the 2009 album ''Prior t ...
excavator
Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, dipper (or stick), bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. They are a natural progression fro ...
capable of mining regolith
Regolith () is a blanket of unconsolidated, loose, heterogeneous superficial deposits covering solid rock. It includes dust, broken rocks, and other related materials and is present on Earth, the Moon, Mars, some asteroids, and other terrestria ...
and icy regolith simulants.
Some of the deliverables include a Project Management Plan, a Public Outreach Report, Presentations and Demonstrations, and a Systems Engineering Paper. The rules and rubrics evolve each year to account for changes to the Artemis Program
The Artemis program is a robotic and human Moon exploration program led by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) along with three partner agencies: European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration ...
mission objectives and advances in commercially available technology. The competition allows NASA to gather and evaluate design and operational data for future robotic excavators and builders. The complexities the robots will have to master are the abrasive characteristics of the regolith simulant, the resources required to excavate and construct, the weight and size limitations of the Lunar robot and the ability to operate by remote control (tele-operate) or through autonomous operations.
For more than a decade, NASA has been able to gather valuable data about necessary excavation hardware and surface locomotion processes that can be implemented as the agency prepares to return to the Moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
through the Artemis program. We plan to put in place sustainable infrastructure that will allow us to explore and study more of the Moon than ever before and all in preparation for the human exploration of Mars
The idea of sending humans to Mars has been the subject of aerospace engineering and scientific studies since the late 1940s as part of the broader exploration of Mars. Some have also considered exploring the Martian moons of Phobos and Deim ...
. To support these goals, participating teams will use the systems engineering process to design and construct a prototype Lunar robot to demonstrate the technologies required for a sustainable human presence on the Moon, and to build those items using “Infrastructure to Stay” technologies.
This is a two-semester, virtual challenge, designed to educate college students in the application of the NASA Systems Engineering process that may culminate with the design and build of a prototype Lunar robot. The events are as follows:
The Challenges
1. Project Management Plan
2. Systems Engineering Paper
3. Public Outreach Report
4. Presentation and Demonstration (optional)
5. Proof of Life Video
For more information see the Lunabotics Guidebook at https://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/nasarmc.html
Why the Moon
The Moon was the first place beyond Earth humans tried to reach as the Space Age
The Space Age is a period encompassing the activities related to the Space Race, space exploration, space technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these events, beginning with the Sputnik_1#Launch_and_mission, launch of Sputnik 1 ...
began in the late 1950s. More than 100 robotic explorers from more than half a dozen nations have since sent spacecraft to the Moon. Nine crewed missions have flown to the Moon and back. The former Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
logged the first successes with its Luna program, starting with Luna 1
''Luna 1'', also known as ''Mechta'' (russian: Мечта , '' lit.'': ''Dream''), ''E-1 No.4'' and ''First Lunar Rover'', was the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of Earth's Moon, and the first spacecraft to be placed in heliocentric or ...
in 1959. NASA followed with a series of robotic Ranger
A Ranger is typically someone in a military/paramilitary or law enforcement role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called “ranging”. The term most often refers to:
* Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with protecting and ...
and Surveyor
Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...
spacecraft that performed increasingly complex tasks that made it possible for the first human beings to walk on the Moon in 1969. Twenty-four humans have traveled from the Earth to the Moon. Twelve walked on its surface. The last human visited the Lunar surface in 1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, me ...
.
NASA directly benefits from this challenge by annually assessing student designs and data the same way it does for its own, less frequent, prototypes. Encouraging innovation in student designs increases the potential of identifying clever solutions to the many challenges inherent in future Artemis missions. Advances for off-world mining and construction offer new possibilities for the same activities here on Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
, expanding the benefits beyond NASA alone. These industries will create a workforce posed to lead a new space-based economy
Space-based economy is economic activity in outer space, including asteroid mining, space manufacturing, space trade, construction performed in space such as the building of space stations, space burial, and space advertising.
Space-based indust ...
and add to the economic strength of our country.
“Lunabotics is Good for NASA, Good for America, Good for All of Us”
References
{{reflistNASA Lunabotics Website https://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/nasarmc.html Novel Approaches to Drilling and Excavation on the Moon https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2009-6431 Preparing for Mars: Evolvable Mars Campaign “Proving Ground” approach https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7119274 NASA Human Spaceflight Architecture Team: Lunar Surface Exploration Strategies https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20120008182 NASA Centennial Challenge: 3D-Printed Habitat https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20170009010/downloads/20170009010.pdf Lunar Spaceport: Construction of Lunar Landing & Launch Pads https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=spaceport-summit TOWARDS IN-SITU MANUFACTURE OF MAGNETIC DEVICES FROM RARE EARTH MATERIALS MINED FROM ASTEROIDS https://robotics.estec.esa.int/i-SAIRAS/isairas2018/Papers/Session%2010c/1_iSAIRAS_Ellery_2018_final-11-40-Ellery-Alex.pdf NASA Centennial Challenge: 3D Printed Habitat, Phase 3 Final Results https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20190032473 A Process Plant for Producing Rocket Fuel From Lunar Ice https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/proceedings-abstract/IMECE2019/V006T06A108/1073266 Robotic Construction on the Moon