A motor whirs to life and its tire starts to spin as team members begin the fine-tuning on their analog Mars rover. Students assemble around the rover to watch the arm articulate the wrist joint. Students start tuning–looking at the code (almost like a GPS) and analyzing the plaque (similar to a QR code). This allows for a better arm subsystem. While one system is being fine-tuned, there is much more being accomplished in preparation for competing in the University Rover Challenge (URC) and the Canadian International Rover Challenge (CIRC).  

 

Austin Schmitz, project manager of MAVRIC, sits in anticipation to see the work his past 6 semesters have led to. Being a senior, his goal is to have this rover complete for competition by the summer of 2022. This would allow for him to hear whirring motors once more as he enters into the URC. MAVRIC is optimistic about doing well in this competition: 36 other teams from both around the nation and the world will be asked to compete on an international stage.

 

To get to this goal and get to the competition on time, MAVRIC had to play catch up due to COVID causing delays over the last year. There was frustration as the progress of fine-tuning and the movement of the rover was abruptly put to a halt. Since the pandemic interrupted working together in person, Schmitz and the team had to move away from working on the rover’s structure to instead focus on the electrical components that could be worked on virtually. Although this caused a delay in the process of finishing the project, the rover is almost complete and will be ready to dominate other teams.  

 

Schmitz has learned the process of building and working with this rover throughout the last couple of years. He has been able to increase his technical knowledge. However, he has not always felt this comfortable in the M2I environment. Walking into his first MAVRIC meeting freshman year he felt the anxiety and intimidation in his stomach. Now he looks back and can feel the pride in his accomplishments and skills learned. Schmitz is glad he had this opportunity to learn everything he could from this project: mechanical skills, technical skills, driving systems, and hands-on skills. Since these opportunities are often not presented within the classroom, Schmitz felt that Make to Innovate (M2I) has provided another outlet to engage students in activities that relate to their major.  

 

MAVRIC has allowed Schmitz, along with the other students on the team, to gain the technical elective credits needed for class while also applying real-world experiences that can’t be learned while sitting in class. These experiences and skills make an impact when talking with companies or places of interest following graduation or to start finding an internship. By Iowa State University having M2I as a technical elective, companies can see that these are some of the best school course projects available to students to link their classroom knowledge to the real world.  “This has been the most impactful thing in my college career,” Schmitz said. Along with the students, experienced faculty advisors are involved with the process to help students achieve the completion of their projects.

 

“MAVRIC needed help with electrical systems and automation systems, so that is where I was brought in,” Nelson said.

 

Matt Nelson is the faculty and technical advisor for MAVRIC. While this project does not currently work directly with NASA or any other engineering company, Schmitz feels that there is high sponsorship potential. MAVRIC is continuing to finalize its rover and will conquer in the upcoming URC this following summer.  “This project is one of the first University teams to go to a Rover Challenge,” Nelson noted. MAVRIC will whir its motors again as it completes its goal and reaches the competition. 

Smoke rises within the transparent walls of the cleanroom down in the basement of Howe Hall as the final solar cells are soldered to the student-designed outer panels of CySAT-1. These solar cells are just some of the final touches being added to the Cyclone Satellite before it continues its journey to Low Earth Orbit. These final touches have both past and present students involved in the project elated to see the completion of this project and the start of designing the next iteration for Cyclone Satellite.

CySAT stands for Cyclone Satellite, the first fully student-designed and integrated CubeSat project within Iowa. The mission planning stage began six or seven years ago. It dramatically took off when the project started working with NASA and Nanoracks. These two companies have consistently worked with CySAT throughout the last three years of the project. Biweekly meetings are held with both of them to discuss better and more efficient processes in completing tasks.

When creating the satellite payload, the payload incorporates a few different systems that both the software and hardware teams worked on. One of the CySAT members, Alexis Aurandt, worked on the communication protocol to relay the soil moisture data from the loud noise amplifiers, or LNAs. Currently, members are working on the ground station, which is the last step in allowing the soil moisture data to be relayed back to earth.

Other systems within the payload include the onboard computer (OBC), electrical power system (EPS), attitude determination and control system (ADCS), and the ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio. The onboard computer is the brain of the satellite and sends commands to the other subsystems, while the EPS is where all the power comes from to engage the payload. The ADCS system allows the CubeSat to orient itself to the earth and uses the sun for censoring, and the UHF radio allows the satellite to communicate with the ground station in Howe Hall. The subsystems are connected through a PC-104 header and work together to allow the satellite to efficiently do its job. The EPS needs a new battery or recertify the battery to finish the hardware side of the project.

Thompson is currently working with capacity testing on the battery: essentially, seeing the age of the battery. This battery has been in use for three years, which places it close to its approved lifetime. This testing is done in the cleanroom (Cardinal Space Lab). These tests include final integrations, finishing work, and working on the supersensitive materials.

Iowa State Students are encouraged to join CySAT and other Make to Innovate projects to strengthen their skills in engineering. Thompson reviewed the requirements for students coming into CySAT. He recommends that students wait until after their first semester before throwing themselves in. The more educated a student becomes, the more responsibilities they can take on. He claimed that it might come off intimidating to some but is inclusive for all branches of Engineering. Kelly was hopeful that all types of engineers would start to join.  While joining can give them technical elective credit, real-world knowledge and experience can benefit students through college and their careers.

Students can get the hands-on experience that is needed and desired by future employers following their graduation. The equipment provided is meant to teach and to be experimented with. While students do want to be careful since everything is highly specialized, Christine Nelson, the program coordinator for Make to Innovate, says, “Due to the generosity of external donors, M2I can provide high quality and highly specific equipment to further the education of our students that they would otherwise not have access to.”

 

 

Ryan Engel is coming to the Lee Liu Auditorium today, November 3, at 4:00 p.m. He is currently a 777 Safety, Certification, and Performance Leader at Boeing. Ryan graduated from Iowa State University with his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and has been employed since 2005. These talks are open to anyone and are free of charge to the public! Engel will talk about his experience and is an invited professional that is sponsored by the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

 

Looking back to 2012, Make to Innovate students had made a recreation of the house from the movie, Up. Due to the recent passing of the voice actor from that movie, we are taking a look back at that project in honor of Ed Asner (who played the character Carl). The pictures of this amazing project can be seen through our Facebook Page (Make to Innovate) and shows the incredible detail of the Up House, the characters Carl and Russell, along with the most important part, the balloons lifting the house. Thank you for the wonderful memories given from this movie; never forgotten.

On August 25, Make to Innovate offered their Fall Kickoff event. The main areas of interest were seen through the projects made by students–going on ten years now for the upcoming anniversary of this program. There are 14 different projects  throughout this semester that are collaborative and allow for everyone to creatively involve engineering.  Above is one of the examples of a project done by a student seen at this event while on display!

Make to Innovate made an appearance at the Iowa State Fair this August by providing a scene high in the air. Iowa State students and others joined together to make the HABET Flight L-158-D; there was video footage captured inside this project to show the height accomplished and the items put inside the miniature looking “air-craft.” There were three different foods placed inside and throughout the duration of the video (about four minutes), they stayed in relatively still positions. This project was a fun and creative way for students to make an appearance at the fair while also doing something they enjoyed! The video can be found through our Facebook page, Make to Innovate, and accessed through the Youtube Link. https://www.facebook.com/make2innovate/.