Are you interested in NASA’s Artemis mission? Subterranean, Lunar, or Mars Exploration? Or Robotics? Then the Multiplanetary Innovations Enterprise(MINE) is the place for you!
Who We Are: MINE is a student-led group that is focused on giving students hands-on experience designing, building, and testing remotely operated vehicles to run in extreme environments, including an annual competition run by NASA. The enterprise offers students independence in their learning and strengthens their skills in communication, time management, problem solving, presentation and technical writing skills, project management, and leadership. While our hands-on projects focus on building skills and learning concepts, we emphasize small groups, collaboration, and teamwork.
All of our projects work with robots, which heavily relies on the collaboration of the hardware, both mechanical and electrical components, and the software. This creates many challenges allowing for individuals to learn more about and from the other disciplines.
We are currently working on 3 projects:
- Lunabotics is developing and building an autonomous lunar rover for NASA’s annual robotic competition. This year our focus was developing a robot to mine icy regolith on the moon however in the future our goal will be more construction oriented.
- DIVER (Deep Investigation Vehicle for Energy Resources) is a project that aims to impact the energy industry by providing it with an inspection vehicle for the exploration of flooded mines. The technical challenges of this project include making the vehicle capable of withstanding extreme water pressure, navigation without GPS or wireless communication, and the collection of water-quality and spatial data.
- Lunar Trencher is building and testing a bucket ladder excavator attachment for a mars field rover where the goal is to make it space rated. The team is currently working on getting the trencher into a vacuum chamber that simulates lunar conditions, to demonstrate that it could operate on the moon.
Information Session
For more information, come to Enterprise Day on Wednesday, March 2, in the Rosza Center or attend two info sessions on Tuesday, March 1, and Wednesday, March 16, both 6-7 pm, in ChemSci 101.
You can attend these info sessions in person or over zoom.
After attending a session, feel free to fill out the application here
Please complete the application by Sunday, March 27.
For more information, please contact:
- Tim Hamilton (Enterprise Manager, email: timothyh@mtu.edu),
- Chuck Carey (Lunabotics Team Lead, email: clcarey@mtu.edu),
- Gabe Allis(DIVER Team Lead, email: grallis@mtu.edu)
- Zach Crook (Lunar Trencher Team Lead, email: zacrook@mtu.edu)
- or Paul van Susante (Enterprise Advisor, email: pjvansus@mtu.edu)