Moon Mission Competition

This past Saturday (8 November 2008), Team LunaTrex held our long-awaited Moon Mission Competition as part of Purdue Space Day, an annual one-day event at Purdue University for approximately 500 students in grades 3–8 who participate in a variety of activities designed to energize and educate children about space and science. Every year Purdue Space Day has an Purdue alumus/a astronaut visit for the day; this year we were honored to have Mark Polansky (STS-98 & STS-116) join us.

The GLXP stimulates innovation and investment by tapping into the competitive and entrepreneurial spirits of its competitors, with the long-term goal of spurring growth in the "new space" industry and inspiring the next generation of space cadets. Team LunaTrex and Orbit Frontiers LLC (Team LunaTrex member) are committed to opening up the benefits and access of space to everyone by actively engaging in educational outreach efforts, so that the widest possible audience of all ages and backgrounds may participate in the extraordinary excitement of this undertaking. In conjunction with Purdue Space Day, and working with the Indiana Space Grant Consortium, Team LunaTrex and Orbit Frontiers sponsored an additional activity, the Team LunaTrex Moon Mission Competition. In this competition students were intended to explore the unique challenges faced by LunaTrex in the GLXP and were tasked to innovate and artistically demonstrate their solutions.

Roving efficiently on the Moon is harder than it might at first seem, and there are many "right" ways to do it. The traditional rovers that have traveled across the Moon and Mars required wheels for locomotion, but for the upcoming Constellation program NASA is considering other means of motion, as are some teams for the GLXP (including LunaTrex!). Students were invited in this competition to draw their vision of a rover that can roam about the Moon, but it could NOT use wheels. It could roll, hop, slither, slide, step, jump, crawl, or inch along the surface of the Moon in any other way.

We were pleased to have many submissions for this competition, and it was a nail-biter judging the winners. Some images of the winners appear below. Our thanks go out to everyone who participated, as well as to all those at Purdue Space Day and the Indiana Space Grant Consortium, whose hard work makes this wonderful yearly event possible. More information is available at the Orbit Frontiers website.