Matthew+L

Facts We Need To Know To Land a Rover on Mars

 * Mars is on a different axes then earth so it moves at different speed
 * Every two years mars and earth is at its closes point of 35 million miles away
 * You have to send the rover before mars reaches the closes point because it takes a while to travel 35 million miles.
 * It takes about 8 months for the rover to reach mars at its closes point
 * You need a rocket that has enough fuel to get enough thrust to break out of are atmosphere.
 * The bigger the rover the bigger the rocket you need.
 * Mars has large sand and dust storms that can block the sun so may be difficult to always use the solar panels for energy production.
 * Mars' gravity is about 1/3 of earth's
 * Mars has strong seasons due to its tilt so need to be able to store energy for the winter
 * Temperature is cold (-125 to 25 degrees C) so rover would need to withstand these temperatures.
 * Make rover sturdy minimize need for repairs.
 * Mars' surface is rocky, hundreds of thousands of craters, large mountains, and the largest canyon in the solar system so need to choose a flat landing.
 * Mars' has polar caps made out of frozen carbon dioxide and water so need to land away from these.
 * Rover needs high traction wheels in order to move across the rocky, sandy terrain.
 * Mars has two moons so want to steer clear of them when landing.

// Ms. Mc: Good facts about Mars and its conditions, however, they all came from our class discussion. Where is your original work? (-3). Please capitalize Mars and Earth as they are proper nouns. 7/10. //

==The invention was the hero's engine (shown in the picture above) this machine would turn a big bowl of water and turned it into steam. This lead to the discovery of the steam engine. The steam was extremly useful and helped make things easier for humans. The Chinese dicovered a rocket to do fireworks and made them explode. The rockets would fly up in the air and explode for all the people to watch.==

==the descovery of theys rockets led to Konstantin Tsiolky's contributed the idea of space exploration by rockets. this is the reason we have all the people landing on the moon and all of the rovers going up to mars. In March 16, 1926 there was the first successful flight with a liquid-propellant rocket. Verein fur Raumschiffahrt made the V-2 and it was used in WWII. russia succesfully sent up satalities into space and this got the US to creat there own space exporation center so they wouldnt fall behind in discoveries. they called this NASA. NASA created many rockets like the one below.==



//Ms. Mc: Good general summary, however you left out a couple of important contributions (i.e., Goddard's liquid propellant rocket and Sputnik, -2). Also, please be more puposeful with your writing and check your grammar and spelling (-1). Your second drawing needed a little more detail and a caption (-1). I like how you refered to your diagrams; please include the figure # when doing so (i.e., "as seen in Figure 2"). 6/10//

Scratch rocket flight simulation
media type="custom" key="14045166"

Instructions to run simulation.

1. click on green flag. 2. enjoy 3.If the simulation does not appear, click on the "learn more about this project" link above.

I liked the way your rocket looked. I think that you could have shown the lander coming down to mars instead of the rover just appearing. I also liked the way you gave enough time to read the different stages of flight.

John P

I think the first sound was good. Also the stages of flight are grammatically correct. I think that you should have done a stage of the lander descending though.

labeled rocket


The engine is first lit and the rocket takes off the launch pad, being guided with the launch lug. The fins also help guide the rocket to go straight during flight. Once the rocket gets to its apogee, the nose cone comes off and the recovery system comes out. There is recovery wadding between the engine and the recovery system so the engines' thrust doesn't affect it. Then the parachute comes out and the rocket slowly lands safely on the ground.

//Ms. Mc: good labels and definitions! Don't forget to include a caption when you upload files and refer t othem in your text. 10/10//

Atlas V 541 rocket
The Atlas V 541 is made up of two parts or stages. The first stage are the boosters that lift the rocket off the ground and get it out of the atmosphere. The Atlas V 541 was picked for this project because it could carry the large payload of the rover. Also they needed a rocket which a large nose cone and the Atlas V 541 had a large nose cone. This rocket was also decided to be used because it had worked in the past with other missions to mars. The rocket when standing is 191 feet tall (58 meters). Below are a list of parts of the rocket and what they do.

Main engine- capable of producing more than 800,000 pounds of thrust at liftoff, it is made up of liquid oxygen and Pr-1 propellant.

Solid rocket boosters- these rocket boosters are for extra bust at liftoff and there are three of them on this rocket. //(Ms. Mc - the Atlas V - 541 actually has 4 SRBs though. That's what the "4" stand for.") (-1/2)//

Common core booster- This engine/booster is used once it is out of our atmosphere and directs the path to Mars in this case //(Ms. Mc - actually the CCB is used for lift-off). (-1)//

Payload fairing- the payload fairing is inside of the nose cone and it protects the spacecraft. //(Ms. Mc - the nosecone itself).//

Centaur- all Atlas V variant fly a common centaur upper stage, which can be configured with either a single or dual engine. //(Ms. Mc - this engine put the rocket in Earth's orbit and then sends the cruise vehicle off to Mars at the right time). (-1).//

//Ms. Mc - good general overview and photo. Please see comments above (-2 1/2). Also, you were to refer to your figure specifically in your text (i.e., "as seen in fig. 4") (-1/2). 7/10//

=Log entry 6= =4/25/2012= =science paper=


 * INTRODUCTION**

The purpose of this experiment was to discover if the mass of a rocket affected the hight of the apogee. The different between the rockets was the amount of paint put on the outside which caused it to be heavier. In theory the lighter rockets should go higher. There are many forces on the rocket when it is preparing for launch and while it is in launch. When the rocket is on the launch pad it had equal forces from gravity and from the launch pad. Then once the engine of the rocket ignites the force of thrust bursts off the launch pad really quickly. Trust is the force that lifts something off the ground or the force that makes something go up. The forces on the rocket now are again gravity because gravity is always acting on everything on earth and the thrust was the opposite force but much stronger then gravity. This makes the rocket shoot up into the air extremely fast. There is also the force of air resistance while the rocket is traveling through the air. This slightly slows down the rocket because the air is putting pressure on the rocket. Once the engines run out of fuel or in our case gun powder it travels on its inertia. Inertia is what allows an object to keep moving without any forces acting on it in its direction. After a while the air resistance and the gravity force over powers the inertia and start to pull the rocket down to the ground. The parachute comes out and air resistance in this case slows down the rocket from hitting the ground because it is going into the parachute which is keeping the rocket up. Finally the rocket reaches the ground and the forces are equal again.

HYPOTHESIS

It was hypothesized that the heavier rocket would not go as high because it is heaver and could not go as high because the engine could not take it as high. The lighter rocket would travel higher because it is lighter and can travel farther at fast speeds before the engine runs out. A heavier rocket also has more air residence then a lighter one because it has less of something like paint or stickers. This was thought to be true because less air resistance and least amount of wait should go the highest.

In the experiment we had 8 groups that each made similar rockets and launched them off and measured the high of the apogee. The variable that was changed was the mass of the rocket. In the data that we collected the mass of all the rockets was a range from 43.6 to 46.2. Shown in the graph below the mass of the rocket didn’t really matter with the results. All of the rockets flew close to the same amount. The data shown on the graph had no relationship between the mass and the high of the rocket. The hypothesize statement that I made was incorrect because I thought that the rocket would fly higher when it was lighter but with the data we collected the weight did not cause any affect. There are also many things that could have gone wrong in this experiment that could have thrown off our data. First off we only had 8 rockets and if we really wanted to test something we would need to at least test it a 100 times. Second off we didn’t make the mass different enough to tell if the mass caused the rocket to go higher or not.

Log entry 7 4/30/12 New fins

On our rocket we placed the fins a different way on the rocket so it was more narrow and gave it less air resistance shown in figure 1. By doing these we thought the flight of the rocket would go higher and straighter. This should happen because the rocket is lighter and has less air resistance.

After rocket two lifted off and we took its apogee of 64.9m high. This is much higher than the apogee of the first rocket. This shows that the narrower fins and less air resistance (showed in figure one) makes the rocket go much higher. IT also could have not been because of the fins because there also was a difference in mass which could have affected the apogee. Usually center of gravity and center of pressure could be a factor but because we did not add any fins or change the shape those things did not change. Rocket two went higher because either the placement of the fins helped it lift higher into the sky or the mass of the rocket was lighter so it traveled higher.

//Ms. Mc - good initial thoughts and conclusions. Don't foget to give your uploaded files captions (-1/2). 4.5/5//

Log entry 8 5/3/2012 History of robots The first robotic machine like object was created in 350 B.C. it was created by a Greek mathematician named Archytas. He invented a mechanical bird named "the Pigeon" that ran on steam. This was not only the first robot but it was the first model airplane. Later in 1495 Leonardo DaVinci designed a mechanical device that looks and acts in a way similar to an armored knight shown in figure 1. This was the first robot to have human like characteristics. A few hundred years later in 1738 was a breaking put in discoveries in robotics because of Jacques de Vuacanson’s inventions. He built three rockets in all. His first was the flute player that could play twelve songs. The next one could play a flute and a drum or tambourine, but his third robot was the most famous. The duck was to represent or modeling a human or animal anatomy with mechanics." The duck moved, quacked, flapped its wings and even ate and digested food. Robotics has progressed greatly over the centuries. Today we have computer and rovers that are on Mars (shown in figure 2) that provide us with information and make are lives easier. One of the main uses of robots today are in factories that make all off are products and our more consistent than humans.



Ms. Mc - good general overview and I like how you included Curiousity. Please be a little more specific with your caption titles. This rover isn't on Mars and what knight is in Figure. 1? 9.5/10

= log entry 10 = = 5/16/2012 = =Challenge programming code explanation=

media type="file" key="100_0153.AVI" width="300" height="300"

Caption? -1/2

The edge challenge was to get the robot to detect the edge of a table and say watch out and stop before it falls off the table. For this experiment, you could use light sensors or Ultrasonic sensor. My group decided to us the light sensor to detect the edge. (How did the robot start? -1/2)



Caption? -1/2

Block 1: this block is a wait block, telling the robot when it hears a noise to follow the following blocks. What port? Block 2: this block is a move block, telling the Robot to move the servitor motors C and B forward. For how long? -1/2 Block 3: this block is another wait block, but this time it waits until the light sensor detects a color less than 40. This will stop Block 2 which will stop the robot from going over the edge. Block 4: when the Light sensor detects a color less than 40, it will activate this block. This block automatically stops the vehicle from moving and the next block goes in action. Ports? Block 5: When the stop button is activated, This block makes the robot says watch out.

//Ms. Mc - good overall but watch the details. -1 didn't indicate ports 17.5/20.//

= log entry 11 = Title? Date?

With new discoveries we have learned that life can live in poor or harsh environments, which makes the chances of life on Mars greater. We have also discovered that there are many materials that are on earth that also appear on mars. In figure 1 it shows the seasons on mars and how they are similar to the seasons on earth. This even more proves that there is a chance of live on mars.

= =

On the current mission to Mars at the moment is going up to mars and looking for microorganism also called microbes. Microbes have a single cell. (sometimes, multiple cells or cell clusters.)  Microbes are a large amount of things that are living things but at a microscopic size. This means these organisms have all 8 characteristics of life which are made of cells, is homeostatic, needs materials, reproduces, responds to stimuli, grows, adapts, and uses energy. If the rover that is currently in flight to mars finds any evidence of these organisms on Mars it is proof of life or was life on Mars at one time. Below (in Fig.2) is a picture of microbes under a microscope.



//Ms. Mc - good figures and discussion of the 8 characteristics of life. More detailed evidence of water and/or life on Mars needed (-1) and you also were to discuss how you would classify a Mars' specimen as either alive, dead, dormant, or nonliving. (-1). 8/10//