Space Apps Challenge 2018

Background:

When the first humans land on Mars, they will have a monumental task ahead of them. From mapping this new world around them, to performing tests on the environment, Linc will be there to assist the astronauts and offset some of the workload.

Functions:

• Characterize soil and air composition
• Detailed terrain mapping and topological characterization
• Detection of minerals and chemical compounds necessary for habitability and vegetation growth

Sensors:

• LiDAR
• Ultraviolet and near-infrared spectrometers
• Visible-light camera
• Ground penetrating radar
• Radiospectrometer

Challenges faced:

We had trouble defining the scope of the problem to solve due to the extreme time limit of the hackathon. We wanted to get really technical in the design of the quadcopter, but we made the choice to focus on big picture concepts and making the video. Other challenges included having limited knowledge of animation and video editing.

Resources:

We utilized a variety of resources including:

• Pixlr
• NASA’s remote sensor resources and Mars mission information
• Opengameart.org - Duion Quadcopter Blender base model
• Video clips from pexel
• Video clip from NASA
• Blender - Modeling the Linc quadcopter based on the Duion model
• Openshot - video creation and editing