Welcome to 06-0283
Greater Lowell Technical High School

Research and Design Web Site Challenge

This year's Botball Research and Design Web Site Challenge is Robotics in Lunar Exploration. Our destination is The Aiken Basin, South Pole of the Moon. Our objective is to send a robot to the Moon and explore the basin for signs of water, or ice, and how much is there. This is based on theoretical ideas that, we as students, came up with to complete this mission. We hope you enjoy our website on Robotics in Lunar Exploration. Just click on the buttons on the home page to take a ride on our journey to the Aiken Basin in the quest to find water on the moon.

The location our challenge takes place in is the Aiken Basin that can be found in the Moon's South Pole region. It is currently the largest impact in our Solar system. It is 2500km in diameter and 13km deep from the rim crest to the basin floor.[5] The Aiken Basin is very rocky and its surface is not as smooth as its highlands surrounding the crater. The basin is mainly a big hole that is deep and cold enough to form ice. The South Pole - Aiken Basin is composed of a mixture of lower-crustal material and mantle rocks containing up to 20% iron oxide and 0.1% of titanium.[5]The basin is basically covered up by basalts which are similar to dark colored rock form lava from volcanoes on Earth. The basalts are a composition of iron, manganese and titanium. The higher amount of both iron oxide and titanium dioxide is in the highlands of the moon. There have not been actual measurements only what the spacecraft Clementine has gathered of these minerals because scientists on Earth have not yet been able to collect samples of these materials physically from the basin.[5]

NASA launched the Lunar Prospector and the Clementine that carried instruments such as a gamma-ray spectrometer, magnetometer, neutron spectrometer and electron reflectometer to take readings of the moon. Some of these devices were used to plot the surface of the moon geography that showed the terrain of the basin to be crater ridden, rocky and uneven. The neutron spectrometer cannot directly detect water but it can locate concentrations of hydrogen which might be ice under the temperature of the lunar poles. We would focus our search in the basin on where the neutron spectrometer found the highest concentrations of hydrogen and is the least geologically treacherous terrain based on the data collected by Lunar Prospector and the Clementine.[4]

For this mission the use of MER robots, like Spirit and Opportunity, currently exploring Mars, would not be effective. This is because the MER rovers run on solar energy. There is no sun light in the Aiken Basin. Having a robot run on solar power where there is no sunlight will be pointless. Also, the terrain is fairly smooth on Mars compared to the terrain of the Aiken Basin that is very rough and covered with deep craters. The MER rovers are designed to roll over smooth surfaces and avoid rocks and obstacles. MER rovers work well on Mars because there is a power source available from the sun and a fairly smooth terrain.[2] The opposite exists where we are going.

Our robot is not a rover like Spirit and Opportunity. It’s like a spider-bot or, as we like to call it “RoboSpyder”.[1] Having a robot that can move like a spider will benefit this mission much more than a rover-like robot would because we feel from our research the terrain deep in the basin is rocky and uneven. A robot that moves like a spider will be able to climb up, over and around obstacles that we expect to find in the basin.

The RoboSpyder will be controlled by a suffocated microprocessor running programs that can be updated as needed similar to the MER rovers by satellite.[2] The area where a spiders’ eight eyes normally are will be sets of infrared sensors for navigation and a sets of cameras and lights that can be turned on and off remotely to record pictures and video. It will also be equipped with a sensor to detect a fuel cell beacon.

Due to the lack of sun light in the basin, we have decided that the best source of power that we have to run RoboSpyder is from a battery. A battery that is capable of being recharged by attaching itself to a fuel cell. When the RoboSpyder is deployed from a shuttle hundreds of fuel cells will be dropped in strategic areas that would be considered best case areas for signs of water. These fuel cells would serve two purposes, first to recharge the RoboSpyder, second to bring back samples that the RoboSpyder gathered.

The fuel cell would be equipped with a button that the RoboSpyder could press to open and close the top part of the cell to allow samples to be deposited. The top part of the cell would store the energy to recharge the RoboSpyder. It would contain a port that the RoboSpyder could plug into. The bottom part of fuel cells would be equipped with enough rocket propulsion to launch from the moons’ zero gravity surface into space where a shuttle could retrieve it.

With the help of information that we already know from the data Clementine and Lunar Prospector, we can incorporate what equipment they had and embedded it onto our RoboSpyder. Our job in this mission is to get to these hydrogen concentration areas that may lead to ice and the highest concentration is the Aiken Basin[3]. RoboSpyder is going to be equipped with devices similar to the spacecraft Clementine, which orbited the moon. We are going to put a laser altimeter, a device that sends out laser pulse on the environment and base on how long it takes to reflect back from the surface. The longer the time it takes to reflect, the deeper the spot of the area would be. This will prevent the robot from coming in contact with large obstacles. Another important instrument that we are going to put on our robotic spider is a Neutron spectrometer that can detect concentrations of Hydrogen. This device will be the main device that will help find some form of water, which might be ice located in the deepest and darkest regions of the basin. The data that the Neutron spectrometer acquires will be transmitted back through satellite.[4]

When the Neutron spectrometer detects an area that is worthy of taking a sample the RoboSpyder will activate its drilling device that is attached to its head region. Whatever samples that are collected will remain in the chamber of the drilling device until RoboSpyder gets back to a fuel cell to deposit it. RoboSpyder positions itself over the area of one of the chambers of the fuel cell and reverses the drilling device to deposit the sample. RoboSpyder is equipped with an extra modified limb on the tail side that it uses to control the fuel cell and recharge itself. The RoboSpyder would deposit collected samples into compartments in the fuel cell. The RoboSpyder recharged itself through its extra modified limb by plugging into the port on the top part of the fuel cell. RoboSpyder empties the fuel cell, loads the samples, seals the compartments by pressing the open/close button and initiates the launch by pressing the launch button. The fuel cell will launch after the RoboSpyder is clear of the area. The fuel cell in also be equipped with a beacon so that both the RoboSpyder and shuttle could detect them. RoboSpyder would continue searching for signs of water and the nearest fuel cell beacon. When the RoboSpyers’ power gets low or it needs to deposit a sample it would make its way to the nearest fuel cell beacon. When RoboSpyder finds a fuel cell that is not standing upright it will have the ability to re-position the fuel cell with its front arms.

The RoboSpyder will keep looking until there are no more fuel cells. RoboSpyder will have a shut down feature when all fuel cell are spent. Future shuttle missions will be able to retrieve the fuel cells floating in space and deposit more fuel cells around RoboSpyder. At which time RoboSpyder will be reactivated and be on the hunt again.