To: Engineering Colleges, specifically Mechanical, Electrical, Computer Sciences, Geological, Civil, Chemical, etc.
Interested in Space Mining, Robots? Mining Innovation Enterprise is looking for students of all majors and years to join our team.
If you are interested there are a couple of ways that you can join and find more information!
- We have weekly enterprise meetings on Tuesdays at 5pm in MEEM 1021 that you are more than welcome to come and sit in on.
- We will have an info session including a presentation and pizza on Thursday, September 13th from 4-6 PM in MEEM1021
We are currently working on 2 projects for prototype systems to design, build, and test for future use on Mars by NASA and others
- First is the rover (The MINER) a remotely controlled rover that will be able to carry designed attachments for field testing starting later this year.
- Second is a gypsum rock mining and water extraction system to attach to the rover which is part of our NASA Early Stage Innovation Research grant to extract water from hard rock gypsum on Mars.
- Depending on recruiting we can form a group to design and build a rover or rig to participate (and win) in one of two NASA lunar and mars excavation and water mining competitions which would include traveling to the sites to do the competition.
We have a need for skills and students interested in
- structural and mechanical design, machining, building, testing, fieldwork, hands-on experience
- electrical, power & control experience for the rover operation and remote control
- sensors, data collection and processing
- programming for the user interface and control of the rover and payload
- processing, fluids, particle flows, thermal aspects and energy efficiency
- system engineering, design process, optimization
- team management, fundraising, website design
You will be working in small interdisciplinary teams to work on subsystems of the rover and payload and work as an enterprise to get the systems designed and operational. We are looking for students to join as soon as possible!
You can also contact our faculty advisor, Paul van Susante, directly at pjvansus@mtu.edu or directly in his office, MEEM 925.