Team Venus - Space Apps Challenge

Team Venus| Virtual Planetary Exploration

Awards & Nominations

Team Venus has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Local Peoples' Choice Winner

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.

SNOWSTORM

Summary

The challenge chosen by the team was “Virtual Planetary Exploration”. Due to ESA's confirmation that there is a patch of water ice sitting on the floor of a crater near the Martian north pole and, the fact that there is no complete system able to extract it from the soil, we decided to create a new tool. Our robot, SNOWSTORM, is capable of extracting ice, using a cylindrical saw that rotates at the same time it slides down, from the red planet and still can resist its conditions. In addition, the robot can also store the ice before reaching the Space Station. Being able to do this, it is possible to discover what happened in the past and even make fuel or sustain a population in the future.

How We Addressed This Challenge

The Virtual Planetary Exploration challenge proposes the creation of interactive 3D models of equipment that future space explorers can use on a planetary surface. To complete this challenge, we developed a robot, called SNOWSTORM, that, with its drill, can perforate and store ice. It can only do this due to a cylindrical saw that at the same time rotates on the z axis, while, with the use of an elevator, it slides down. The saw uses 70% of the power of the Falcon 500 motor, reduced by 10:1, so that it can perform 7 revolutions per second. After extracting the ice, it is stored inside the saw, which is covered with graphite fiber sheets to ensure that this ice does not melt completely before reaching the Space Station. The idea of removing a large cylinder of ice, allows for better studies and analysis, because the ice keeps information in its layers. This is extremely important because, by researching, we couldn’t find any data about the water in Mars, so we made a robot that can take the frozen water, then it can be studied to consequently facilitate the process of future missions, like using the water to make fuel or even sustain a population.

How We Developed This Project

The SNOWSTORM idea started because, analyzing the data made available by NASA, we realized that there wasn't much information related to the water already discovered on Mars, although it hasn't been collected yet due to the lack of a tool to do this. According to The European Space Agency (ESA) “images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a patch of water ice sitting on the floor of an unnamed crater near the Martian north pole.” The unnamed impact crater is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars's far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5° North and 103° East. The idea of being able to analyze the water is super important, due to the fact that the glaciers are deposited in layers, according to the era in which they were formed (the most recent ones cover the oldest ones), making it possible to discover what the past was like on the Red Planet.

For the development of the robot we used a Computer Aided Design (CAD) software called Onshape, where it was possible to develop the entire robot and its movements in 3D. We also used Adobe Illustrator to develop both the team and the robot logo. However, due to the short space of time, the team couldn't develop a traction 100% adapted to the challenges faced on the ground of Mars. Nevertheless, SNOWSTORM performs the expected functions, such as extracting surface ice and storing it in a way that does not melt.

3D design:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/6aab6447bbff1df7cbbb3f67/w/6fa0b5a6dd201834666b9d59/e/e689a7ba19f8d92b2dfbf717

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

We used ESA data related to a crater found in Mars “Images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a patch of water ice sitting on the floor of an unnamed crater near the Martian north pole.” to prove that our robot can do something unique, it can be the first tool ever that is able to extract ice from mars, and consequently study the past and then the future of the red planet.

To justify the material used in SNOWSTORM, we used data from NASA related to Mars conditions “The Red Planet surface has been altered by volcanoes, impacts, winds, crustal movement and chemical reactions.” and other information presented in the Mars Fact Sheet and Mars Overview databases.So, in order to resist the planet's conditions, we chose graphite fiber, a material that is lighter than aluminum and more rigid than steel, as the main material of our robot, the same used in the structure of Curiosity, by NASA. And we designed the robot for being able to store the ice without melting completely before reaching the space station.

We did an exploratory analysis on NASA's available resources about Martian water and we didn’t find any analysis already done, so we propose the SNOWSTORM robot, which would extract this data, from the extraction of ice found in the crater. Not having this data makes our robot even more important, because it would help humans discover this information.