The Red Planet| Can You Hear Me Now?
Awards & Nominations
The Red Planet has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Can You Hear Me Now?
Red Rover
Summary
You are operating the Perseverance rover on Mars to collect rock samples from the surface. Record rover commands (using arrow keys) on Earth, then send them to Mars as a communication packet. Watch your commands fly through space towards Mars, but be careful not to send them when the Sun is in the way! When the information packet reaches Mars, the rover will execute those commands, and move itself accordingly. Pick up as many rocks as you can before time runs out!
How We Addressed This Challenge
We developed an interactive 3D game using Unity. The game is designed to illustrate the difficulties of communicating with Mars due to time delay and other celestial bodies. The player is tasked with maneuvering the Perseverance rover to pick up rock samples, using commands which are delayed due to the distance between Mars and the Earth. If the command packet is sent at the wrong time (when the Sun is in the way) the packet will fly into the Sun and will not be transmitted!
The application is important because it gives the player the surprising realization of the difficulties that come with communication with Mars, and helps one visualize something that is otherwise difficult to visualize. With this app, we hope to give the player a greater appreciation for the complexity of space travel; even the seemingly rudimentary task of communication becomes extraordinarily difficult. We hope this appreciation inspires curiosity and a willingness to learn more about what space travel has to offer.
How We Developed This Project
We began development by brainstorming various game ideas, and quickly decided that we wanted to visualize communication across space. As a preliminary, we modelled a partial solar system based on Newtonian physics. Then, we created a visualization for travelling data packets between the Earth and Mars. Finally, we had the idea to include a rover mini game which the player controls using the command packets sent to Mars from Earth.
We created the project in Unity, scripting in C#, and using Unity's built in features to create the game scene. We used Unity Collaboration (Unity Teams) for version control during the development of the project, as well as to enable teamwide development. The final source code was uploaded to GitHub.
Our team faced many surprising challenges, some of the notable challenges include building the system for real delays between the user input and the rover movements, as well as creating the Mars environment, fit with a rover controller and sufficiently realistic custom physics for the planet.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We used the NASA Perseverance rover 3D model in our game, which was the original inspiration for creating the playable mars environment. We separated the wheels from the 3D model, reattaching them later as individual components in order to spin and rotate each wheel individually, improving the realism of the physics on Mars.
Project Code
Data & Resources
- NASA Perseverance rover 3D model
- Textures for the Earth, Sun, Mars and Moon