Awards & Nominations
The Light of Stars has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Nominee
Exploring Venus Together!
High-Level Project Summary
Our team was working on an energy storage system which is meant to power the rover that will be sent to Venus. We could not use batteries because of the extreme environment, so we stored the energy in terms of potential elastic energy. We developed the energy system to transform the elastic energy of the coils by releasing them, pushing the gear on the back wheels and we got kinetic energy. This kinetic energy allowed the rover to move and from the movement we will generate electrical energy with dynamo, which is connected on the front wheels. This dynamo will supply the electronics of the rover.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
We chose the challenge, as you can see, Exploring Venus together. Our task is to design an energy storage system to power the rover that will be sent to Venus. Part of the description was to not use batteries, so we chose to store the energy in form of elastic potential energy in steel coils.
The plot of our plan, the base of the rover and its elements. There are even number of wheels and each rod is connected to 2 wheels. Rods on the back have gears which are placed so they can make contacts with the metal coils (springs). When the coil is released it will push the gear to rotate and will transform the elastic potential energy into kinetic, which will allow the rover to move. On the rods on the front, gears will be connected to dynamos. Dynamos are used to transform the kinetic energy in electric. The current generated will be AC-alternating current but using rectifiers circuit(4 diodes) and capacitors we will transform it into DC-direct current.
Space Agency Data
- Energy Storage Technologies for Future Planetary Science Missions | NASA Solar System Exploration
- High Energy, Long Cycle Life, and Extreme Temperature Lithium-Sulfur Battery for Venus Missions
- NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program - Energy Storage for Extreme Environments
- Venus Resources
- Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE) | NASA
The resources stated above, have inspired us to explore the idea of our project even further. Important ideologies are presented in these resources, and we really like this challenge, as it got us to explore our creativity. We also expanded our knowledge on physics and astronomy.
Hackathon Journey
We got to learn to be a team player, how to work under pressure, as well as embracing our creativity and bringing out the best in each other. Our love for physics and topics related to astronomy inspired us to choose this particular challenge. Although we used modern resources in the form of an internet research, we also used old physics books and we put our already existing knowledge to the development of the solution.
We resolved setbacks with team effort and good communication.
We would like to thank our mentor Vera Zoroska, that introduced us to this challenge.
References
- https://www.nasa.gov
- Energy Storage Technologies for Future Planetary Science Missions | NASA Solar System Exploration
- High Energy, Long Cycle Life, and Extreme Temperature Lithium-Sulfur Battery for Venus Missions
- NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program - Energy Storage for Extreme Environments
- Venus Resources
- Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE) | NASA
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephyr_(rover)
Tags
#exploringvenus #spaceexploration #teamwork #lightofstars