Lunar Rover Landing

The object of this challenge is to land a 40g payload from 6ft in the air safely with the minimal amount of materials needed.

• 1. Each team will be provided with materials such as cloth, string, cup, tape, glue, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, and straws and tasked with creating a landing mechanism(s) that will aid in the safe delivery of the payload to the Martian surface.

  2. The product will take the general direction of a parachute with some sort of landing gear (landing gear optional.) Teams will be charged by the following schedule based on the materials they use to create their project. Use the provided worksheet to figure out your cost and overall score.

     1. Cloth - 1.5 points per square inch (figure out area)

     2. Straws, Pipe Cleaners, Popsicle sticks - 1 Point per inch

     3. String, Glue, Tape - .5 points per inch

     4. Teams will be charged 10 points per day per team member, teams will be fined an additional 15 points per day per person where production goals are not met

Sequence

• 1. On your own create a prototype of your idea, test drop the product, watch it carefully, what can you learn? Observe two other classmates test their products, what can you learn from theirs? Compare their product to yours and make one assumption about something that does matter and doesn't matter (works or doesn't work) as far as the design is concerned.

  2. Combine into small teams under your teacher's direction, compare notes from the previous step, what can you learn? Using information from your group members design a single final product to test.

  3. Figure final costs of the product, and compete in the final challenge, how did your team score?