John

Facts We Need to Know in Order to get a Rover to Mars

 * 4th planet in the solar __system__
 * Roughly the same amount of land surface as earth
 * -125 – 25 °C (-190 – 75 °F). So rover would need to withstand these temperatures
 * Mars has no surface water
 * 56 – 399 million km away from earth
 * Earth is closest to mars every 2 years (we want to launch when they are closer so it's a faster trip)
 * Takes 7-8 months to get there
 * 38% of earth's gravity
 * Surface pressure is 1/100th of earth's
 * Mars has large sand/dust storms that can block the sun so may be difficult to always use the __solar panels__ for energy production
 * Might block off communications
 * Rover needs to be as "dust proof" as possible
 * Need enough fuel to get enough thrust to leave earth's gravity
 * Mars has strong seasons due to its tilt so we need to be able to store energy for the winter
 * Make rover sturdy to 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 area
 * 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 2 moons so want to steer clear of them when

// Ms. Mc: Good facts about Mars and its conditions, however, most see like they came from our class discussion? Where is your original work? (-2). Please capitalize Mars and Earth as they are proper nouns. 8/10. //

History of Rocketry
The Hero Engine was an early invention that used steam as a __form__ of propulsive gas that showed the essentials of rocket flight. The first rockets were used in religious festivals by the Chinese to create explosions. They also used rockets to repel the Mongols during the battle of Kei-Kang. The idea of space exploration by rockets was first proposed by Konstantin Tsiokovsky, a Russian school teacher. For his contributions he has been given the title of The Father of modern Astronautics. Goddard’s experiments with liquid fuel __led__ to the first successful flight for a rocket propelled by liquid fuel. Goddard was called The Father of Modern Rocketry. During World War Two, the Germans created the V2 rocket which once launched could destroy entire city blocks. The Germans used the V2 rockets against the British during the war. In October of 1958, NASA was created for peaceful exploration of space to benefit mankind. NASA was formed after the first satellites were launched into space.



//Ms. Mc: Good general summary, however, a little more detail would have improved your piece (-1). Drawings are good but your second one is a little vague (-1/2). Please refer to your diagrams in your writing (i.e., "as seen in Figure 2). 8.5/10//

Scratch Rocket Flight Simulation
media type="custom" key="14164878"

Instructions to Run Simulation 1. Turn on sound 2. Click on Green Flag 3. If the simulation does not appear click on learn more about this simulation

Kelly- I liked the landing gear and how it bounced (even though the bounce may have been a little "awkward"). You spelled "engines" wrong in one of the text boxes, but it was a tiny mistake so... I also liked how you gave the text boxes enough screen time for people to read.

John- I think your landing was cool, with the bounces. I think you should have had the speech bubble up for a less amount of time. I think your beech scene was nice.

[[image:cascience7-2012/jmp_rocketphoto2.JPG]]
The nose cone of the rocket is used to make the rocket arrow dynamic by cutting through the air so the air will go around the rocket. The body tube is a long paper tube that is the main structure of the rocket. The recovery system is a parachute that ejects out of the rocket during flight so the rocket will not be damaged on its descent and so you can fly it again. The recover wadding is placed between the recovery system and the rocket motor so that the hot gases will not burn up the recovery system. The launch lug insures that the rocket goes straight after it is launched. The fins are used to stabilize the rocket during flight. The motor mount is used as a mount for the rocket motor. The rocket motor is the fuel that is burned to provide thrust to make the rocket accelerate upwards and it is not reusable.

// Ms. Mc. - great labels and definitions! Please make your images small enough to be seen on one screen and give them a caption when you upload them. 10/10 //

Atlas V 541 Rocket
The Atlas V 541 rocket is made up of the Atlas V rocket, solid rocket motors, centaur, and payload fairing. The Atlas V 541 was chosen for this mission for two reasons. The Atlas V 541 rocket has the correct, heavy weight, liftoff capabilities required for this mission. The same rocket has also been used by NASA in the past, and it has been successful on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and New Horizons missions. The Atlas V 541 is 58 meters tall and has a mass of 531,000 kilograms when it is fully fueled with the spacecraft on top. As seen in figure 1, the Atlas V rocket is a tank that holds fuel and oxygen that goes to the engine which sends the spacecraft into Earth’s orbit. The solid rocket motors are four rocket motors that are used to increase the thrust of the engine. The Centaur is part of stage two of the rocket and it is fuel and oxidizer that fires the rocket into Earth’s orbit and then into space on its way towards Mars. The payload fairing is a nose cone that protects the payload while the rocket is going through Earth’s atmosphere. //Ms Mc - excellent overview of the launch vehicle! 10/10//

Rocket Lab Write Up
The purpose of the experiment was to find the relationship between the mass of the rockets and the acceleration that the rocket had. When the rocket was on the launch pad the force of gravity and the force of the launch pad are both acting on the rocket. During lift off and powered flight the force of thrust is overcoming the force of gravity to lift the rocket off the ground. Afterwards, once powered flight ended the rockets inertia keeps the rocket moving upwards until it reached apogee or the highest point of flight and then gravity pulled the rocket back down. Inertia is an objects tendency to continue doing what it is doing. It was hypothesized that the more massive rockets will fly the lowest and the least massive rockets will fly the highest because the thrust of the motor was the same on all of the rockets. As seen in Graph 1, the mass of the rockets ranged between 42.9 g, which was the lowest mass, and 46.2 g, which was the highest mass of the rockets. The rocket’s apogee ranged between 38.4 m, the lowest apogee, and 78.1 m, the highest flight during testing. As shown in Graph 1, the data showed an inverse relationship. My hypothesis that the heaviest rockets would fly the lowest and that the lightest rockets would fly the highest was confirmed in the experiment because there was a downward trend shown between the rocket with the lowest mass’s apogee, which was 67.5 m and the rocket with the highest mass’s apogee, which was 62.5 m. Error could have affected the experiments because there could have been gusts of wind during the launch and the angle gun measurers were changed throughout the experiment, so that could have affected the apogees of the rockets. Rockets number 2 and 4 were considered outliners because there was only one angle gun measurement for each of them and they did not represent the trend line shown throughout the rest of the data.



Rocket Fin Redesign Lab


As seen in Figure #1, by placing the new larger fins on the nose cone it will help the rocket cut through the air and provide lift for the rocket which will may make it easier for the rocket motor to provide thrust. The larger fins will also make the rocket more massive so it will have more inertia which will make it fly farther during the coasting stage and the fins will give the rocket more stability. The three smaller fins placed at the bottom of the rocket will balance the rocket while it is on the launch pad.

The mass of the rocket on the first launch was 44.3 g which was 22 g lighter than the rocket for the second launch. The rocket during launch number one flew 57.7 m high and the modified rocket from launch 2 only flew 19.4 m high and then toppled back down. Some factors that I belief affected the height of the flight of the redesign rocket were that the rocket was 22 g heavier than before, the fins were placed above the center of gravity and the center of pressure was above the center of gravity which made the rocket flight unstable. Since the fins on the nose cone were not placed evenly around the rocket, the flight path of the rocket was not stable because the fins were not providing stable lift to the rocket.

//Ms. Mc - great initial thoughts, diagram, and conclusions! 5/5//

History of Robotics
Early robotics date back to ancient China where Yan Shi, an engineer, was said to have made a human like mechanical figure that was written about in the Lie Zi text. It was supposed to be able to walk and move its head. In the 6th century BC, water clocks were sometimes referred to as early robotics. The Hero of Alexandria was credited with creating a robotic device that was supposed to be able to speak. As seen in Figure 1, the first programmable humanoid robot was built in 1206 by Al-Jazari. Al-Jazari’s robot had a programmable drum that could play different rhythms and drum patterns.

Several advancements in robotics were made between the 1500s to the 1800s. Machines, including mechanical calculators and robots capable of drawing and playing music, were built during this time period. One of the most famous of these machines was Wilhelm Schickard’s “Calculating Clock.” After the industrial revolution, modern concepts of robotics began to develop because of the introduction of electricity and complex mechanics. As seen in Figure 2, the first direct drive arm was built in 1981. In the same year IBM also introduced the first PC computer. Now, in 2012, robotics is being used to send rovers like Curiosity and Discovery to Mars for research to learn more about astronomy.



//Ms. Mc - good overview and figures! Insert your figures immediately after the paragraph in which you discuss them. I like how you included the Mars' rovers, however, there aren't any names "Discovery" but rather Sirit and Opportunity. They are exploring Mars for signs of past or current life. (-1/2) 9.5/10// = = =

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Robot Programming
The robot will wait until I say go. Then it will move forward until it detects the edge of the table. After that it will stop and say, “Watch out.”

media type="file" key="jmp_Challenge 3.AVI" width="300" height="300" Video 1: Robotics Challenge



Block 1: A wait block that tells the robot to wait for the sound sensor in port 4 to detect a sound greater than 39 decibels. Block 2: A movement block that tells the robot to activated servomotors B and C, so that the robot will move forward unlimitedly at 25% power. Block 3: A wait block telling the rocket to wait for the light sensor in port 3 to detect light less than 38. Block 4: A movement block that tells the robot to activate servomotors B and C, so that the robot will stop. Block 5: A sound block that tells the robot to play the sound file “Watch out” at 100% volume.

//Ms. Mc: Great job! 20/20//

Life On Mars?
The first evidence that there may be life on Mars was found by the Mariner 9 orbiter which was the first spaceship to orbit another planet. Mariner 9 took photos of Mars that showed that Mars had a volcanic past and was eroded by water. This means that Mars, at one point in time, had a molten core, and it used to have water which is incredibly important for life on Earth. Mars Odyssey, in October 2001, began to map the chemical composition of the surface of Mars to try to see if Mars has elements key to sustaining life. Mars Odyssey’s research also suggested that there may be giant subsurface reservoirs of water ice under the polar regions of Mars. In January of 2004, rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars to analyze places on the surface that seemed to be affected by water in its past. Opportunity found rocks that were dropped at the shore of an ancient body of salty water. As seen in figure 1, in 2008, the Phoenix Probe found water ice underneath the surface of the North Pole of Mars. In 1996, scientists found a meteorite from Mars. On the meteorite the scientist found possible life in the form of bacteria-like objects in electron microscope imagery and they detected hydrocarbons. (This is disputed now though.)

As seen in figure 2, a microbe or micro-organism is an organism that can only be seen by using a microscope that is made of either a single cell, cell clusters, or multicellular relatively complex organisms. Microbes or micro-organisms were the first forms of life on earth around 3-4 billion years ago. If a sample from Mars was found to have microbes you would classify it in these four ways.Alive meaning that the microbes show all eight signs of life. The eight signs of life are made of cells, responds to stimuli, use energy, need materials, reproduce, grows, adapted, respiration and homeostatic, or the tendency of a living organism to maintain internal stability. Dead, meaning that the microbes were alive, but are not anymore. The microbes could be classified as nonliving meaning that they never were alive, and they never will be alive. Finally, the microbes could be classified as dormant meaning that the characteristics of life are slowed to minimize metabolism to help conserve energy and some are temporarily suspended.





//Ms. Mc - excellent work! 10/10//