The Moonbots playing field is 7.5 feet by 7.5 feet and is built from LEGOs. The picture above is a picture of the Moonbots playing field as shown on the Moonbots website. The website gives details about the missions and the building instructions for the field models.
This is our Moonbots playing field. We constructed our field from LEGO pieces ordered directly from the LEGO Corporation. We want to thank the Pathfinder Chapter of AUVSI and COLSA for providing the necessary dollars to purchase the materials needed to make our playing field.
This summer during the weeks of June 21st and June 28th, ten members of the Holy Spirit Regional Catholic School's Robotics Club took on the Moonbots Challenge. For two weeks, they studied information from NASA's Lunar Science Institute , NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA's Ames Research Center to find out more about the surface of the Earth's moon, and the design and function of NASA's extraterrestrial landers and microrovers. The students used physical and online maps to study the lunar terrain and locate the landing sites of both the Apollo Missions that sent spacecraft and astronauts to the moon as well as the landing sites of the Luna Missions that sent microrovers to the moon. They learned about the Lunokhod I and II, microrovers built and sent to the moon by the USSR in the 1970's. They read about the designs and journeys of the Mars microrovers: Pathfinder-Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity at NASA's Mars Rovers website. They found about the testing of the K-10, a "Lunar Electric Rover" in the lava fields of Arizona. They learned about NASA's current missions: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which is taking high quality digital images of the lunar surface and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) which discovered that there is water on the moon. From this research, they designed robot lunar microrovers from LEGO NXT Mindstorms parts. After completing their designs, they built and tested their designs on a simulated lunar surface built from LEGOs. Click here to find out more about the students, the designs, and the NXT lunar microrovers that were a part of this project.
In the month of July, ten other members of Holy Spirit's Robotics Club had a chance to build, program and test microrovers made from LEGOs. During the week of July 26th, these ten students found out that building, programming and even being able to control these microrovers remotely takes a lot of patience and skill. To find out about the students who participated in Moonbots Jr. click here.
