Rovers poop as well

We talked so much about how the rover looks, how we built it, how we designed it and what our secondary mission will be but we never really explained how our secondary mission components look and how the mechanism works. We did describe our secondary mission idea in the 3rd blog post so be sure to check that out before!

So how do the “two devices” work? The mechanism for releasing those two devices, which we named Mini Research Stations (MRS) can be found on the second floor of the rover. They are stored in two black cases. With the help of two servo motors the cases will be inclined in such a way that the MRS’s will fall on the ground. Although the angle might not look that big the MRS’s slide easily and fall on the ground. So what happens after we press the button and one of the MRS’s falls. We start to take into account the data received from the sensors and after the second one is launched we will start to compare the two data sets in order to pick the best spot for a human settlement. The data will be sent to the Arduino Mega through the NRF24L01+ antennas. We will be able to see the data as the Arduino Mega and the Raspberry Pi communicate through a USB.

We thought of this mission as it is scalable and could work even with very big distances. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see something similar when we’ll try to colonize Mars.