Europeen Space Agency's Rosetta Project simulated with LEGO®

Comets consist of the most primitive, i.e. unprocessed, material in the solar system. To understand the earliest epoch of solar system formation, we must investigate the nature of this material. Much of what we know of comets presently comes from remote sensing using Earth-based telescopes, plus a few brief flybys that have added only a few hours of in-situ observation. The Rosetta mission is poised to make a dramatic advance in our understanding of comets by matching trajectories with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, orbiting it, and setting a lander on its surface. [1]

ESA's Rosetta mission will rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. In November of that year, Rosetta's Philae lander will touchdown on the comet and thoroughly investigate its composition.

ESA Space Scientist Detlef Koschny build a LEGO model of Rosetta mission in order to visualize the complicated orbital choreography used in this space mission.

He then goes on and demonstrates the prototype of the Philae lander he made with his son's LEGO Mindstorms.

Then with help from Steven Canvin from the LEGO Mindstorms Team and other players, a full fledge prototype was built... Here is a fantastic video showing off this prototype:

The feedback from the engineering students on the prototype will be used by ESA, the German Aerospace Center DLR, Europlanet, Lightcurvefilms and LEGO to finalize the Education Kit and adapt it to the needs of European curricula.[2]

Read the full article here.
All video presented here are from the ESA YouTube channel

[1] Rosetta: Mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko [Hardcover]
[2] www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMN40NO7EG_index_0
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Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 3

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these Fall and Winter remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Braill3 by Jerry Nicholls Braill3 is an EV3-based LEGO Braille bricks reader. This robot uses its fingertip, made from three touch switches, to read messages written using the LEGO Braille bricks and will speak out what it detected. If it sees a simple maths problem it will attempt to solve it and give the answer as well. To learn more about the process of creating this machine, read Jerry's blog . Braill3 can be viewed here . Set Review: The Braille Bricks set is well thought out. The ratios of the letters is suitable for general use and the addition of some punctuation and arithmetic operators is excellent. There is a card showing what bricks there are and their quantities, but no form of sort...

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 2

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these summer and fall remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Remote controlled material handle r by Jozua van Ravenhorst (aka Mr Jo) This remix combines the LEGO Technic Material Handler (42144) with MINDSTORMS EV3 (31313) It uses the power of pneumatic cylinders to move objects around. By using a bluetooth remote control, very precise movements can be made with this model. Touch sensors in the base chassis prevent the turret twisting the cables that go through the turntable to much. The program has several protections to prevent over pressurizing the system for each of the 3 individual pumps and valves that control the 2 booms and claws. The real version of this machine is mostly used in waste material sites to bring the material to machines that sort and...

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT...

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