NASA Achievement of ITS Engineering College

 

ITS Engineering College, Greater Noida affiliated to Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University is one of the most advanced engineering colleges in India. With accreditations by NAAC & NBA and approved by AICTE, this institute has a bag full of achievements to boost on. And talking about achievements, what could be a bigger achievement than getting invited by NASA itself to participate in its Human Rover Challenge in 2020?

What is the challenge?

Every year NASA conducts a Human Explorer Rover challenge to engage students worldwide towards the next phase of human space exploration. The NASA Human Rover Challenge is a competition among students of selected schools and colleges worldwide to create rovers capable of traveling simulated surface of other planets. Its annual event is a more complex follow-up to NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race.

What are the challenges for ITS Engineering College?

The NASA Human Rover Challenge is held at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The major challenge for the students of ITS Engineering College is to design, construct, and also test the mobility devices to perform swiftly in different environments.

 

The students planned the course and strategy, and after various discussions, it is decided that a team of five students from ITS Engineering College will be responsible for designing and building their rover. And of them, two students, a male and a female will be chosen as the drivers of the human-powered rover that will have to cross a half-mile obstacle course of simulated extraterrestrial terrain of craters, boulders, ridges, inclines, crevasses and depressions.

 

This challenge will provide the students with valuable experiences in the technologies and concepts of future exploration missions.

NASA’s goal regarding this challenge

NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race has engaged more than 10,000 students during its 20 years long run. It has brought out the talents of budding engineers and scientists greatly and has demonstrated that they are capable of carrying out complex works.

 

Now NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge is taking these experiences to a higher level. They are giving authentic engineering experience by letting the student teams design, build and also test technologies that enable rovers to perform swiftly in a variety of environments. It inspires the students to become the next engineers to design NASA’s next-generation space systems.

Details about the competition

The engineering challenges that the students will face are motivated by the assignments of mission objective tasks that simulate real-time obstacles faced by different space missions like the Apollo 14 surface mission. The team of students will have to make real-time decisions about the missions they attempt or leave based on their virtual eight-minute supply of oxygen.

 

The competition requires two students, a male and a female to drive their rover through a terrain of about 0.50 miles that will include a simulated field of asteroid debris, boulders of about 5 to 15 inches, an ancient stream bed with pebbles of about 6 inches deep, and erosion ruts and crevasses of different widths and depths. The terrain and time requirements make it more challenging as the rover’s compactness, lightweight, high performance and efficiency will be thoroughly noticed.

 

Even before entering the course, the rover entries will be tested to see if they would fit into the lander equipment bay. The dimensions are clear, the rovers must be a maximum of 5 feet long, 5 feet tall and 5 feet in volume. The teams earn points by designing a lightweight rover, successfully assembling the rover in the allotted time, performing tasks throughout the mission, successfully completing obstacles and also meeting the pre- and post-challenge requirements. Each team will be permitted two chances, the better score of the two will be taken as the final team score.

NASA’s ambitions with the Human Exploration Rover Challenge

NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge aligns with Artemis mission to return to the moon by 2020 and explore it. The competition emphasizes particularly designing, constructing and testing technologies in unique environments. The designs made by the students will encourage the next generation of engineers and scientists and provide them with valuable experiences as they may someday plan future space missions and explorations to other planets.

Importance of this achievement to ITS

ITS is proud to be on NASA’s website as an invitee to NASA’s Human Exploration Challenge. ITS Engineering College, Greater Noida was established in 2006, and by 2020 it has been able to be one of the 3 colleges from India which have been invited by NASA for its Human Rover Challenge in 2020.