Thomas SL

Space Exploration Project Part #3

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by

tsankeylewin27
in

A few months ago, my team and I wondered how hard it would be to land a rover on Ganymede. In this website I will show you how my team and I have built and tested a prototype for an extraterrestrial rover. Our team had to design an efficient transportation method on a foreign celestial body, both without wasting excess energy and without wasting time, capable of a 5-kilometre-long round trip on Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons. This vehicle must handle extreme conditions including temperatures as low as -180C, low gravity (a tenth of Earth’s), rocky terrain, and interference from the planet’s magnetic field affecting electronics.

Coming up with and designing the 3D prototype of our vehicle was the longest portion of the project. In the end, we decided on a 4 wheeled vehicle that looks similar to a car. We realized that if we were to build the complete rover, we would need to make the shelling out of a very heavy material so as to make sure it would not float away because of the small amount of gravity on Ganymede (The gravity on Ganymede is about 1/9th of Earth’s gravity!).

As shown above, the CAD portion of our design was quite blocky and later we ended up sanding it down so as to give the wheels some breathing room.

When testing, we used an app called “Vernier Video Analysis”. We used it to measure how fast our vehicle traveled on flat ground over a certain distance. We then tested how fast our vehicle traveled on rocky, sandy terrain so as to imitate the harsh climates of Ganymede. We created grooves in the sand with big craters and chunks of rock to simulate the grooved, chunky and crater filled portions of the surface of Ganymede in an attempt to make our tests more accurate. We created 3 different set ups of rocky terrains to test on which can be seen down below (apologies for low quality photos).

#1

#2 

#3

We tested on the first terrain 4 times, the second terrain with a smaller hill at the end once and the final terrain with the biggest hill 3 times. These will be referred to in the graph (along with the control) as Layout #1, #2 and #3 respectively.

The data that we collected is useful for allowing us to measure the amount of efficiency our vehicle has.

We took the average velocity per frame of the video on the grooved terrain and divided it by the average velocity per frame on the control (flat surface). This helped us calculate the amount of velocity it was able to maintain when on a rocky terrain to infer the speed it would have on the surface of Ganymede.

Efficiency is measured via input in over input out. By manipulating this equation, we found that the average velocity of the test over the average velocity of the control calculates the percentage of speed maintained by the car. 

Along with this, we also created a graph to show the different averages amongst the different

From this, we can find that the average of all three layouts comes to 0.5327 m/s, whereas the average of both of the controls comes to 0.9705 m/s. By manipulating the equation to the left of the text we get that the % of Loss on the test is 54.9%.

Based on what we learned from this test, there is a lot that we can improve. If we had the opportunity to create another prototype, I would turn the wheels that we had used into gears. This is because there was only one thing that the Rover was unable to do and that was climb a hill that was around 3 times its size. It was unable to do this because the squishy rubber wheels got stuck in the sand. If we had turned the squishy wheels that we thought gave it sort of an extra cushion and suspension into hard, gearlike wheels with many grooves for traction it could increase the rover’s climbing capabilities dramatically.

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Comments

4 Responses to “Space Exploration Project Part #3”

  1. mcrompton Avatar
    mcrompton

    I love the approach to your report, Thomas! You assume that the reader knows nothing about the project and you provide all of the information required for that reader to understand what you are talking about. The description of the test, the layouts, and the data is solid, although I wonder how the control layout looked. My biggest question relates to the implications of this test on the intended final vehicle. What do you think the mass of the final vehicle might be, with passengers and the materials that you would ultimately construct the vehicle out of? If you used the same style of wheels that you used in your test, how would that vehicle perform with the final mass under gravity on Ganymede. You mentioned effect of magnetic field on electronics. How might those effects be mitigated and how might those methods impact mass of vehicle? Please reply in the comments below.

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  2. cholmen Avatar
    cholmen

    I ended up kind of lost when following along on the data – like… where do the values for the bars come from, what’s the rationale for combining the tests when they had different aims, and so on. I also wonder about the implications.

    Reply
  3. tsankeylewin27 Avatar
    tsankeylewin27

    For the mass of the vehicle, given that the weight of a Toyota Tacoma (a type of truck that looks like our model) is 2,000 kilograms, with the addition of 4 people (around 280 kg given that the average weight of a person is 70kg) and the heavy shell that we will construct to weigh down the vehicle for the atmosphere will be around 750-1000 kg, given that the weight of the steel armor of an MBT (a type of military vehicle) is around 40-50% of its overall weight, it mass would be around 3280 kg on earth. On Ganymede however, this would only equal about 364.44 kg because the gravity on Ganymede is around 1/9th of the gravity on earth. This would mean that the floppy wheels that we would use would most likely be very good at traversing Ganymede given that they wouldn’t have to carry much weight and thus would be able to bounce up and down, giving us more suspension. The magnetic field from Jupiter effecting electronics is tricky. A solution for this would be fiber optic cable. This is due to the fact that fiber optic cable transmits signals through light instead of electronic wiring, meaning that the magnetic field of Jupiter would not mess with our system. As for the control layout, it was just simply the flat pavement ground that was right next to our test. If you need a picture of the control, I would gladly send you a video of it.

    Reply
    1. mcrompton Avatar
      mcrompton

      The reasoning through the mass of the vehicle and the other adjustments that you would make are decent, Thomas. Thank you. As for the questions around the tests and the data are concerned, there is no direct link between the formulas and the graphs. You graph velocity, but don’t show any data for time or distance, nor do you work through the data to calculate the velocities in any way that is clear to the reader. And you say that “we can find that the average of all three layouts comes to 0.5327 m/s.” I think that Ms Holmen’s question asks why do we want to average the tests? What does that average tell us and why would we use that as opposed to the individual tests? I will mark my part of the assignment complete, but I would suggest that you follow up on Ms Holmen’s questions.

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