Touch the comet! Testing of the “Rosetta’s Comet Touchdown” educational kit in the Széchenyi István High School, Sopron, Hungary

Paper number

IAC-12,E1,7,6,x14004

Author

Mr. Balint Soos, Hungary

Coauthor

Ms. Ágota Lang, Hungary

Coauthor

Mr. Norbert Wesely, Hungary

Coauthor

Mr. Botond Sléber, Hungary

Coauthor

Mr. László Bodnár, Hungary

Coauthor

Mr. Maarten Roos, Portugal

Year

2012

Abstract

Introduction:  In our school works a course in robo¬tics where students build and program robots from a LEGO MINDSTORMS kit. We took part in the Hun¬ve¬yor-Husar project with a Mars rover based on a rover mo¬del kit, of which the operating arms are built out of LEGO and controlled by an MINDSTORMS NXT com¬puter.  We saw the “Rosetta’s Comet Touch¬down” educational kit on the EPSC in September 2010. We agreed that we would also par¬ticipate in testing the kit. It comes with a set of Interdisciplinary Activity Sheets and the proposed activities cover three areas: science, art/history and engineering.
In this presentation we report  in particular the activi¬ties of the LEGO building team.

Overview: The LEGO team started to design, build and program a new landing unit. Although the de¬mon¬stration model that is part of the Rosetta’s Comet Touch¬¬down kit is a perfect copy of the original, our stu¬dents did not use it as a base. Instead, they fol¬lowed their own ideas about how a lander should look like. The legs based on their own creative ideas and all the sensors and probes are designed by them. So they were forced to build their own “original Hungarian” lander: ROZI.



Tasks and solves: We looked for tasks and focused on problems what we can solve from the LEGO elements and from our knowledge and mental background. 
- measuring temperature: Instead of LEGO-sensor we use a semiconductor  thermometer was made compa¬tib¬le to our system. We let down this sensor too
 - measuring gases by a gas-sensor. It was fitted into the case of the sound sensor, in this way it was made compatible to the LEGO sys¬tem. Using a laser beam to heating we liberate gases from the frozen surface. We let down the sensor to the sur¬face.
- measuring the surface gravity, by an instrument which is a  specific development  of our Team.
- measuring surface magnetic field using an LEGO compass. 
Besides these measurements we installed a wireless camera. 


Motions: To carry out these measurements the following motions are necessary:
opening the shield of the camera; turning around the cabin, operating the trigger of the gravimeter. We must let down the thermal and  gas-sensor.


 Summary: We report the work and  the activities of the LEGO building team. The planning/building/programming problems gave great tasks for high school students, but they enjoyed the work and learned very much.

Abstract document

IAC-12,E1,7,6,x14004.brief.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-12,E1,7,6,x14004.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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