Stupid ideas for the secondary mission

A contest about a rover... Should we make a drone that would hover around the rover? What do you think about a drone tied with string?

Besides measuring some atmospheric data (temperature, pressure) and collecting an object from the ground with the help of a gripper, the rover has to perform a secondary mission of team’s choice. We came up with multiple stupid ideas for the secondary mission prior to finding the one we registered in the contest with.

1st idea: Drone launch

We wanted to launch a drone from our rover at the end of the proposed track, which will fly at a height of approx. 25 meters, take some pictures of the ground and then return to the rover. We gave up this idea because it would be very hard for us to control the drone remotely. Even if the rover had a camera transmitting live image in the direction of the drone, the images will come to us with a short delay, which will be problematic in case of droving a drone.

2nd idea: Sunrise and sunset calculator

We wanted our rover to be able to calculate when the sun will rise and set on a random location on the Moon or Mars for example. Being charged using solar energy, this algorithm would allow us to plan a longer route of the rover on the specific planet. However, this would have required us to redefine all coordinate systems we use on Earth such as the ecliptic, which are specific for each planet and quite complicated to derive.

3rd idea: Collect soil sample and plant a tree

We wanted to attach to our rover a mechanism similar to a drilling machine in order to be able to spoil the soil and collect it afterwards. We also thought of planting a small tree or flower in the hole made with the driller, in order to observe the behaviour of the plant in the planet’s soil. We realized however that the driller would be very hard to construct considering the fact that we don’t know what type of soil will be at the competition (it could either be very soft or very tough) and also in terms of purpose, most probably the plant will die on any Solar System planet.

Finally, we found an idea we all agreed on. Read our next blog in order to find out what is it about!