ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Last Wednesday, The LEGO MINDSTORMS Philea lander was present at the European Parliament for a special organized dinner debate about European Space Programs. The event was co-organized by the Danish ms. Britta Thomsen (MEP). David Southwood, the European Space Agency’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, said, “No individual European country alone could have achieved a mission like the Huygens probe, which landed on Titan in 2005. If the European Parliament needs evidence that Europe adds value to member states, what we are achieving in space exploration is proof of Europeans working together and providing a vision for the future.” An interesting outcome was that space programs will lead to unique innovative solutions that trigger everyday live later, a good example is the solar power efficiency that is needed for satellites that travel far form the sun. The LEGO model was showing that also the new generations will keep their interest in space explorations. read the full artic...

In this fantastic video by Lightcurve Films, you will get to know 3 Mindstorms experts; our own Martyn and his two friends Eric and Gerrit. This is a 33min long, highquality film with english subtitles. A must see if you're a Fan of LEGO Mindstorms. Maarten Roos of Lightcurve Films has this to say: On 27 April 2010, I met Martijn Boogaarts for the first time. He had been indicated to me by Steven Canvin from the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® team. I was working on an educational project around the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta Lander, involving making a LEGO® MINDSTORM® model of the lander that would resemble the real lander as close as possible and that could simulate some functionalities. I wanted to use it for an educational film. Detlef Koschny from ESA, and his son Julius, had made a nice prototype a few months earlier, but I needed specialists now to make a full working model. I had managed to get the project supported by ESA, the German Aerospace Center, Europl...

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 demonstra...