Project S| Virtual Planetary Exploration

Virtual Planetary Exploration

Your challenge is to create interactive 3D models of equipment (e.g., planetary geology tools) that future space explorers can use for activities like exploring a planetary surface.

Soil Non-Toxicater

Summary

We have developed a design which puts the soil through 3 filters. The tool will only accept soil, not stones or rocks. After the filtering process, it mixes the toxic soil with water. So perchlorate dissolves in water and we will get 2 outputs from this process; the toxic water and the non-toxic soil. The toxic water goes into the process of distillation and after that process, we will have the perchlorate and the safe water left at the end. The safe water will be re-used in the design.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We have developed a 3D design of a tool which can be used in Mars. It is important because, the astronauts who will go to Mars will need to eat food without getting poisoned. Our tool separates the toxic materials in the Martian soil. We hope to create eligible soil for agriculture in Mars.


How does our project work?

  • Firstly, our tool filters the soil that astronauts put to prevent rocks and stones entering the main system with its different sized filters.
  • The toxic soil will slide down to the water filtering part and then it will get mixed with the water, the toxic mixture of compound (different perchlorate compounds) will be dissolved in the water after some time.
  • After the dissolution process, the water and toxic soil mixture have to wait some time in order to ensure that the perchlorate compounds will be dissolved.
  • After the soil and the water separate, astronauts will release the water from the filter and water will pour in to the distillation unit the remaining soil will be free of toxic materials and the astronauts will have a non-poisonous soil.
  • The water with perchlorate will go into the distillation unit and in the distillation unit the water will get vaporized and the perchlorate will remain in the bottom of the distillation unit.
  • The steam will go into another pipe where it will be condensed and will be re-used in another process of non-toxication, the remaining perchlorate can be used afterwards.
How We Developed This Project

We think the easiest way to create life on any planet comes from the soil. In the first hours of the hackathon, we went to chat room and brainstormed our ideas about the challenge. We had so many ideas and we debated about the ideas in order to choose the best one. After we chose the ideas, we used Paint 3D and Fusion 360 on the design. In the presentation and the videos we used After Effects, Photoshop and Canva. We had many problems about the idea, everybody had a counter-idea, and after the debate we have reached a common ground. We had problems while trying to find how can we dissolve the perchlorate in the Martian soil so we had consulted our chemistry teachers, and at the same time we have consulted one of our friends about the 30 seconds video because we didn't have the experience for animated videos. We got help from our mentors and we thank them for giving us this opportunity. We had some problems while designing our project on Fusion 360 so we made research on the web and solved our problems. We had problems while converting the design to WebGL and we researched it and found an add-on for it. But at the same time we have learned a lot about both Mars, geology and toxic compounds.-

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
Project Demo
Data & Resources
Tags
#agriculture #compound #tool #geology #Mars #SpaceAppsChallenge #NASA #3D
Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Judging process.