TRAPPIST-1| Create a Mascot
Create a Mascot
Vers: The Space Robot
Summary
In this project we created a cute and friendly robot named Vers as our Mascot to teach space knowledge and scientific information to young audiences (6 - 10 years old). We created a hand-drawn poster and comic strip about Vers and his best friend Colo, another cute robot. The comic strip contains two stories: Robots in Space, and Building a Rocket. We also used Scratch programming language to develop a video game named Vers in Space Odyssey, to educate young kids about different types of spacecraft propulsion technologies and their use in space travel, in an interactive and entertaining way.Our Mascot Vers will make space knowledge and technology more accessible to young audiences.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Scientific information is essential for understanding our Earth, moon, solar system, galaxy and uniVerse. However scientific information especially space knowledge can often feel difficult to understand to young audiences. Actually both our team members are young kids (6 - 10 years old) so we feel this challenge ourselves all the time.
In this project we created a cute and friendly robot named Vers as our Mascot to teach young children like us space knowledge and scientific information. Vers and his best friend, another cute robot named Colo, will appear in posters, comic strips, graphic novels (not included in this project), and video games, etc, to interact with young audiences in various ways. They are funny, friendly, entertaining and educational.
To create Vers as our Mascot, we first try to build personality for Vers by writing a personal introduction for him:
Hi, my name is Veries Aroobck Jalieusthigwa. You can call me Vers. I’m a robot that went to space as an astrobot to visit other planets. I study different types of rocket engines and their speed to get to other planets. I am fascinated with comets and their flight paths. My best friend is another robot named Colosthus Kathoozuk Yammaktopop, but you can call him Colo for short. Together we built a spaceship out of cardstock, but it didn’t work. Colo considered calling some engineers. The rocket they built worked and we went to space. Our first destination is the moon. We switched our chemical powered engines to ion propulsion on our way to Mars. Hopefully we will reach Neptune, and perhaps even Proxima Centauri b!
Based on the personalities and characteristics of Vers and Colo, we drew the poster by hands.
As young kids we loved comics so much.We think comics are a very good way to educate young audiences space and scientific information. We created a comic strip starring Vers and Solo. The comic strip contains two stories: “Robots in Space”, and “Building a Rocket”.
“Robots in Space”
“Building a Rocket”
Besides comics, we believe the best way for our Mascot Vers to interact with kids is through video games. We used Scratch programming language to design and develop a video game named “Vers in Space Odyssey”. The story of this video game was adopted from our comic book “Robots in Space”. Game player drive space ships with different types of propulsion systems to travel to different planets.
Propulsion systems includes:
Chemical Powered
Ion Propulsion
Laser Propulsion
Nuclear Propulsion
Warp Drive
And target planets are: The Moon, Mars, Neptune, and finally Proxima Centauri b, an exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to our solar system.
Here are some screenshots of our video game:
“Game Started, Vers introduced himself”
“Introduction of the game”
“Started with what we have today, the Chemical Powered propulsion”
“First destination: our Moon. It needs about 10 hours for a very fast chemical powered spaceship”
“Collect solar power for fuel and upgrade the propulsion system”
“Need to avoid these Asteroid”
“Reach the Moon!”
“Congratulations from our mascot Vers”
“Vers introduced the next mission: Mars. It will need more than 2 months for the fastest chemical powered spaceship we have today”
“Upgraded to Ion Propulsion, speed is 320,000 kmph now! Will reach Mars in days!”
“Reach Mars!”
“Next destination is Neptune. It will take more than 2 years even with Ion Propulsion”
“Spaceship upgraded to Laser Propulsion. Speed increased to 2,000,000 kmph. Only need more than 3 months to reach Neptune now!”
“Upgraded to Nuclear Propulsion. Can have 8% of the light speed. Only need days to reach Neptune now!”
“Reach Neptune with the Nuclear Propulsion!”
“Our friend Vers introduced the next destination. The closest star system to us is still too far away even for Nuclear Propulsion!”
“We need Warp Drive! Near the light speed now!”
“Finally we arrived Proxima Centauri b in 4.24 years!”
How We Developed This Project
Both our team members are young kids (6 - 10 years old) so we feel this challenge ourselves and are motivated enough to solve it.
1. To create Vers as our Mascot, we start with writing a personal introduction for Vers, imaging we are the space robot ourselves.
2. After finished Vers’ personal introduction, we feel we have become good friends with the space robot and understand his personality very well. We then started drawing Vers and his best friend Colo on paper using color pencils.
3. We drew two comic strip stories about Vers and Colo using blank comic paper and pencil by hands.
4. We used Autodesk SketchBook to draw Vers the space robot on computer.
5. We used Scratch programming language to design and develop a video game named Vers in Space Odyssey, to educate young audiences about different types of spacecraft propulsion technologies and their use in space travel. We added Vers as one of the Sprites for our game.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The main purpose of our video game Vers in Space Odyssey is to teach young audiences about different types of spacecraft propulsion technologies and their use in space travel. So we want to make our game simulate the real space travel.
We searched the information about five different spacecraft propulsion technologies in NASA’s websites, and collected the speed data from them from NASA.
Chemical Powered
Ion Propulsion
Laser Propulsion
Nuclear Propulsion
Warp Drive
Another important data we obtained from NASA are the distances between different planets. We get the distance data from The Planetary Data System for the following planets:
The Moon
Mars
Neptune
Proxima Centauri b (an exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to our solar system)
All these data we obtained from NASA were used in our video game Vers in Space Odyssey to simulate the travel time to different planets using different spacecraft propulsion technologies.
Project Demo
Video Game "Vers in Space Odyssey" Game Play Demo Video Clip (Highlights)
Here is the link to our video game if you want to play yourself:
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/430071303
Here is the link to some raw pictures of our project:
http://www.binarysearch.org/Programming.html
Data & Resources
1. Propulsion System and Spacecraft Speeds:
https://www.nasa.gov/
Chemical Powered - 18,000 kmph
Ion Propulsion - 320,000 kmph
Laser Propulsion - 2,000,000 kmph
Nuclear Propulsion - 8% light speed - 86,340,228 kmph
Warp Drive - near light speed - 1,079,252,849 kmph
2. Distance between planets:
Earth to Moon: 382,500 km
Moon to Mars: 54,600,000 km
Mars to Neptune: 4,273,060,000 km
Neptune to Proxima Centauri b: 4.24 light years - 40,113,497,000,000 km