Student demostrates thermal storage from regolith

Rock star ... Aaron Bonanno used powder from a local quarry to simulate moon dust as he looks to develop a solar energy system that could be used on the moon [Dallas Kilponen / Brisbane Times].

Jen Rosenberg
Brisbane Times

IMAGINE if you could harness the sun's energy to power the moon.

Aaron Bonanno has found a way to make the improbable possible and has designed a renewable energy system to power a futuristic moon colony.

The boy who soaked up anything to do with space, travel and exploration is now a fourth-year university student about to appear before a conference of some of the finest space engineers to present his findings.
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The American Society for Civil Engineers has invited Mr. Bonanno to explain his research at the Earth and Space 2012 Conference in California this weekend.

Using basalt from a quarry on the central coast to simulate moon dust, he has developed solar thermal energy blocks that are lightweight and easy to transport and store.

Read the article HERE.

Students study lunar samples

From Album LP4

Trinity Academy eighth-graders Gabrielle Fatula and Steven Wargo engage in a mock tug-of-war over a display of Apollo lunar samples on loan from NASA for Catholic Schools Week at Trinity Academy in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The display, together with meteorite samples and student-made displays will be open for public viewing Wednesday, February 2, from 6 to 8 p.m.

John E. Usalis

The students at Trinity Academy in Shenandoah won't have to go to the moon to see lunar soil and rocks. The items came to them.

Thanks to Trinity science teacher Michael Kowker, samples of the lunar material collected by the astronauts of the Apollo space program will be on display to the public Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the school as part of Catholic Schools Week.

Protected in a plastic case, the samples will provide students and visitors to the school a chance to see some of the lunar materials up close, which for many would be their first opportunity.

"The lunar samples are not the largest in the world, but I thought it was a neat idea to get them here and let people see the moon," Kowker said in his classroom, which has many space-related images on the walls.

Kowker's connection to the lunar materials came through a workshop he attended in the summer at Penn State University Park.

"The workshop was sponsored by NASA and the Pennsylvania Space Consortium," Kowker said. "It was a weeklong seminar on lunar exploration. There were about 30 teachers in attendance. We did investigations on the theories of lunar formation, the structure, chemical composition, some of the new discoveries, such as they found water, and, of course, the Apollo missions. There was a representative from NASA at the workshop, and we got certified to request these samples from NASA in Houston."

The samples were provided through NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center and were collected by the astronauts from the Apollo 14 through 17 space flights. Kowker said there are about 80 similar sample displays that are available to be loaned to schools around the country. Elementary and high schools get the smaller samples, while colleges can get larger samples.

"I don't know if it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it was something I never had to request the samples, but once I got my certificate, I thought it would be great for the kids and the community to see," Kowker said. "One of the samples is a rock from the highland regions along the equator of the Moon collected in Apollo 16. They think that rock is 4.5 billion years old, which would be from the original lunar crust."

Kowker said many people remember watching the Moon landings and the astronauts walking on the lunar surface, and this display brings them closer to what they saw.

"I was a just a pre-schooler at the time when they landed on the Moon," Kowker said. "Maybe I sat there and watched it, but I've done a lot of reading and could see the excitement of the whole thing, and 'Wow! This is the Moon.'"

Read the full story, HERE.

Finalist MoonBots teams down to the Wire

Twenty finalist MoonBots teams continue preparations for their "final mission challenge" in the student competition, complimentary to the Google Lunar X PRIZE contest. More than two hundred teams from sixteen nations originally completed requirements for the first phase of the MoonBots Challenge before the final twenty qualified last April. The contest was open to students between the ages of nine and eighteen.

Using LEGO bricks and MINDSTORMS components, the MoonBots contest requires the teams to create simulated lunar rovers and use them to complete a series of predetermined tasks.

As the contest comes down to the last lap, teams are very busy blogging about their experiences, writing about obstacles overcome lessons learned. Some teams are completing their live missions a bit early to prevent any clash with school schedules.

Judges mentioned being impressed with results from all entries during earlier rounds. “Teams with little or no previous experience with robotics or with CAD software are engaging in this competition on equal terms with veterans,” said Steven Canvin, marketing manager for LEGO MINDSTORMS.

Surveys of participating students reveal nearly half report significant increases in understanding of the Moon and lunar exploration and skills gained using a variety of professional software applications.

“The students are learning to combine several challenging skills and to apply them in a new way. The MoonBots Challenge has required them to get creative, to find imaginative ways to express how they’ve used science, technology, engineering and mathematics to solve problems,” Canvin said.

The twenty finalists MoonBots teams are: ARES (Texas, USA); Coastal Quarks (California, USA); Cougar LEGO Robotics Team (Ohio, USA); Crandroids (Michigan, USA); G.I.R.L.S. (Missouri, USA); got robot? (Illinois, USA); Intergalactic Bacon (Florida, USA); Just Ducky (Minnesota, USA); Landroids (New Jersey, USA); LegoAces (Ohio, USA); Lunar Horizon (California, USA); Milkyway Monsters (Massachusetts, USA); Moonwalk (New Jersey/Connecticut, USA); New Hartford RoboSpartans (New York, USA); OABB 4-H Lego Robots (California, USA); Pushing Frontiers (Lovenjoel, Belguim); Team Tater Tot (Minnesota, USA); The Shadowed Craters (California, USA); WEBstormers (Cape Town, South Africa); and Yellow Jackets (Michigan, USA).

All twenty finalist teams will receive a LEGO MINDSTORMS kit, two-year subscriptions to WIRED and all of the LEGO bricks used to build the simulated lunar surface necessary in the final phase of the competition.

Giant Leap: a science program blasts off

St. Michael's student Sophia DiFonzo tests her Lunar Rover before its launch during an engineering project at the school Friday. Behind her is classmate Gwyn Willwerth. Students designed and built a rover and Landing Pod modeled on the Mars Exploration Rover [Hudson (MA) Sun].

Catherine Buday
Hudson Sun

Inside their new, larger building, St. Michael School’s students are exploring space -- in more ways than one.

Since inheriting the building formerly occupied by Hudson Catholic High School, which closed in June, St. Mike’s elementary school children now have access to spacious laboratories and a large gym, which last Friday served as the proving ground for dozens of student-built “lunar rovers.”

Made from cardboard tubes, plastic Easter eggs, coffee stirrers and makeshift wheels – all protected by bubble wrap and cardboard boxes – the rovers helped the kindergarten-through-eighth grade students better understand physics. And they are just one example of how the new building is helping students take on more ambitious projects now that they have the room.

“Our school has always had an interest and a commitment to science,” said Principal Pat Delaney. “This is the first time that we have had the facility to do it.”

The school now has a stronger engineering curriculum, and six committees, headed by parents, devoted to the sciences, she added.

Read the article HERE.

Lunabotics Mining Competition

NASA Exploration System Mission Directorate
Higher Education Project
in partnership with the
National Space Grant College and
Fellowship Program,
is proud to announce the Inaugural

Lunabotics Mining Competition
May 25-28, 2010
Astronaut Hall of Fame
Kennedy Space Center,
Cape Canaveral, Florida

The purpose of the Lunabotics Mining Competition is to engage and retain students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) in a competitive environment which may result in innovative ideas and solutions that could be applied to actual lunar excavation for NASA.

Details HERE.

Students on the Big Island of Hawai'i help develop micro lunar rover

Kelson Lau and Jordan Olive are developing technology that will be implemented on NASA's Lunar Micro Rover. (Photo courtesy of the Governor's Office)

While Americans across the country celebrated the 40th anniversary of man’s first walk on the moon this week, two Hawaii students are participating in a NASA summer internship program, where they are developing technology that will be used on the Lunar Micro Rover.

Kelson Lau, a recent Waiakea High School graduate and current University of Hawaii at Manoa student, and Jordan Olive from the University of Hawaii at Hilo, are participating in the NASA Robotics Academy, a NASA multi-center, 10-week residential summer internship for students specifically interested in robotics.

Both were participants in Waiakea High School’s award-winning student robotics program.

Lau, who was presented with the Governor’s Innovation Award in 2008, is working on the Solid-State Cooling System for the Lunar Micro Rover to test a method of cooling the rover’s CPU and other sensitive electronics such as the motor controller in the harsh lunar environment.

Olive is working on a dust deflection device, and its effectiveness in space, developing circuit boards that will control and regulate power onboard the lunar micro rover, and designing a “hot plate” that will test the rover for space readiness.

“My participation in the Waiakea High School Robotics Program has easily been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I not only gained many priceless memories, but met amazing mentors and people, made new friends, gained skills, and had amazing opportunities opened for me,” Lau said.

“I believe that my participation in robotics has given me the skills and confidence needed to participate in the Robotics Academy Internship at NASA and contribute to the program.”

Olive also expressed his appreciation for the skills gained by participating in student robotics programs.

“Hawaii [is] doing something right! As a newly graduated senior last July, I was very intimidated to join the team of scientists and engineers working on the Lunar Micro Rover at NASA Ames Research Center,” he said. “The experience gained from Waiakea High School’s Robotics and Hawaii Space Grant funded fellowship projects gave me enough ‘know how knowledge’ to actually come up with a device (electrodynamics dust shield) that will actually be implemented on the Lunar Micro Rover. Robotics in Hawaii is no little thing.”

Robotics is a critical component of the Lingle-Aiona Administration’s Hawaii Innovation Initiative because it engages students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.

The competition also fosters students’ teamwork, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills that will better prepare them to enter the work force.

For more information about student robotics programs, visit www.robotics.hawaii.gov

Learn more about NASA summer internships and the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium fellowship at www.spacegrant.hawaii.edu