 You see a nice guy standing beside of me. He has a mission. He wants to go to the moon or well he wants to send a robot to the moon. This is Karsten Becker and I think he has earned a nice applause because they are really working on this. And he now wants to say something about that it may be a good idea to test things and not only the software because it may be a good idea to know how you can free the robot if it is stuck somewhere before it is on the moon. Have fun. Thanks. Moin. Everyone. I'm Karsten from the team part-time scientist. We are a bunch of people that want to send a robot to the moon and we have been working on this mission for like five years now. So just four years ago when we went to the CCC camp we had our little rover and our two rovers and now we have been progressed further and we have a bigger one and pretty cool one. But what I want to talk about today is actually how do you test the rover? How do you not just test the components of the rover but how do you do a more thorough test of all the components involved? And so this is what an analog mission simulation does. It's not related to those analog sunwives or anything. It means that you are recreating the environment as close as possible as you can to test something on earth. Some parts are difficult to recreate. For example having a big vacuum chamber where you can actually drive in and others are downright impossible to get right. For example gravity you know it's very hard to get rid of it. So but first maybe I should you know show a little bit around what we have done so far and luckily for me there is a video which perfectly demonstrates what we are actually planning to do. A trip to the moon is not easy. First the enormous gravitation of earth has to be overcome. Then hundreds of thousands of kilometers are waiting to be crossed, full of harsh darkness, the intense radiation of the sun and extreme temperature changes. The part-time scientists, a private team of engineers, are working on mastering this journey and winning the Google Lunar X Prize. Audi is supporting them in the competition to build a lunar rover and send it to the moon to fulfill a number of tasks. In order to leave the earth once and for all the two moon rovers are loaded into a satellite launch vehicle. They're mounted into the top because this is the optimum position to survive the enormous forces during the launch. The Deneba rocket launches with incredible thrusts of 4520 kilometers and speeds of up to 7.8 kilometers a second until it reaches the lower orbit at 300 kilometers. There the service module is released. This part of the rocket will carry the moon rovers into space. To leave the earth's gravity, the service module orbits our planet in ever-growing ellipses. Then it catapults away and starts its five-day long journey to the moon at speeds of up to 10.5 kilometers a second. While the moon is often portrayed as being fairly close to earth, it is in fact around 384,400 kilometers away. That's enough space to fit every other planet in the solar system between earth and the moon. The module carrying the two rovers approaches the moon at high speed and enters its orbit at a precisely calculated angle. Once this task is completed, the spacecraft can prepare for the last part of the journey, the landing. The landing module separates from the service module and starts the critical landing process. The part-time scientists chose the landing site years ago, the Taurus Litro Valley near the Apollo 17 landing site, an area well known by scientists and lunar explorers. In science fiction movies, landers simply descend to the lunar surface, but in reality, the lander is still orbiting the moon at a speed of 1.7 kilometers a second until the final landing sequence is initiated. The landing is the most crucial part of the journey. While slowly descending, precisely calculated rocket thrusts slow the lander down as it approaches its final landing site. Once the lander has touched down safely, it detaches the two rovers, which bathe in sunlight first and then call home. Their journey to the moon took more than eight years of development, planning and engineering work. Now, the real mission can begin. But what will the rovers do on the moon and what are the challenges on Earth's ancient satellite? We'll explore this in more detail in our next episode. Yeah, so if you know anything about trajectory planning or how landers actually land, then I apologize for the graphics. They are not up to detail in some parts, you know. But I think it's a good visualization of how we are going to approach the moon. And some of the things that changed since our presentation at 31st, 31st C3, we have won the milestone prize award that we were talking about back in December. So that gave us like 750K US dollars. So that's pretty neat. But this talk is about the anodic mission simulation. And when you're landing on the moon, there are many, many things you have to do. So there are many phases involved, you know. There is for example the pre-flight phase where you have to make sure that you're fueling up the rocket, you're bringing it to the launch site, the payload gets integrated into the rocket and then eventually the flight starts. So we will be delivered to the low-Earth orbit when we are flying with a NEPA or a little bit further out when we are using another one. And then, you know, there is like seven days of waiting. But eventually we will come to the phase two where it's about to land. This would be very interesting. But it's also very hard to the flight and the landing are also the one that are nearly impossible to recreate on Earth. So what follows is what you call the primary operations, which is the one where you can actually, you know, collect 30 millions from Google, which is about driving 500 meters sending back HD video. And then we will carry out, once we have collected the money and have done the party, then we will go on with regular science stuff, you know, like making experiments and do all the cool stuff. Yeah, eventually our mission will end probably with the first arrival of the first lunar night because the changes in temperature are so high that we don't expect our rover to survive. You know, it might react on the next Monday with like, hey, I am still alive, but, you know, there is only hope, not no guarantees. So, yeah, and then the mission is over. So what we, in an analog mission simulation, for example, for the primary operations, what you want to test is, for example, the operations that are happening once you've touched down. So there's the self-test of the rover where you make sure that everything is working as you expect. And then there is some deployment, so as you saw, the rover are attached to the base of the lander and so they are like, plop, dropping down. And then we make sure that all the communications are working and eventually we will try 500 meters and send back HD video. This is something that you can actually test on Earth and this is also what our friends of UVF, for example, are doing. They have done the MRD test of their space suit for mass operations and they do it always in some mountains where they can do some skiing, probably, while they are doing this. I don't know. I actually wanted to have, you know, like a live chat with those guys wearing the suit, but unfortunately they just finished their test. So this won't work, unfortunately. Usually we keep our engineers tightly in the room with doing science stuff, but occasionally we go on an adventure. And this is how our analog mission simulation looks like. So what we want to test on an analog mission simulation is how can you actually traverse in an unknown terrain. It's very easy when you are walking around behind the rover to see what it's doing, but it's another thing if you have no idea where it is. Also we have those drop containers that could be deployed and some mission control that needs to work. And also the old tests are actually about collecting plenty of data. This is, for example, one of the sites where we did some testing, which is antenna reef on the Tide Mountain. It's pretty cool because there is absolutely nothing man-made in this picture there. So that's except the people. So that's pretty cool. But to drive around with just the two cameras that you see in the rover, it's actually pretty tough as we figured out. And so one of the changes that we are making for the next iteration of the rover is to have a camera sitting on the bottom of the rover so that we can see all four wheels because we found that it's very hard to decide what material actually provides enough slippage to drive and which is very loose material. And seeing the wheels helps the operator to decide what is a good situation and where he needs to do something more fancy. Also it helps to, once you are driving and driven around you, it's very helpful to decide, you know, do you want to have like a pilot in a co-pilot situation or do you want to have like maybe something else that could help the operator to drive safely in this environment? And also the question, how does the delay impact the operation of the rover and the environment? Another thing that we talked about 31st C3 was the drop containers, which are actually those little triangles that are sitting below the solar panel which can be deployed on the surface. And so one of the critical tests of an analog mission simulation for us would be to test that this actually works. You know, you have it sitting in a lab and you're pushing a button and it falls down and you're like, okay, this works. But once it gets in touch with reality, you know, the plan will probably not work out as planned. So, you know, it's difficult to predict whether, you know, in which ways it can fail. And the idea of the mission simulation is to find all the ways it could possibly fail and also be after the operator sitting in the mission control figure out in which way it failed to find the procedures to deal with it. This is actually the toughest part. You know, there are people standing behind the rover and they see that how it failed. But the people that are sitting in the mission control, which are far away, also need to figure out in which way it failed. And this is a very tough thing. So, in order to improve the, ensure that we can operate safely on the moon, we need to design a mission control which can actually provide useful information to the operators and we need to find out which ways are the best way to visualize those. And so, in the end, this is what the analog mission simulation is all about. We collect data, you know, in terms of telemetry data coming from the rover itself which can be helpful to adjust some parameters, you know, like knowing the power consumption, in what situation, what's the power consumption and maybe optimize it. But also, where does the process get stuck, you know, once you're done with the, where could the process be optimized that the operator gets more information about what is happening on the moon surface and also what were the technical problems that we encountered. And those technical problems need to be addressed and the process problems need to be addressed as well in the way that there is some definition on how we actually can, you know, allow people to join in and do stuff like this. I just realized I was talking much faster than I expected. But there is one last video I want to show you because another thing that we just announced in June is that we have now partnered up with Audi, they are supporting us. And we also did a very nice video about our mission. And I want to show you that. Countries. Okay, let me, sorry, let me start that again. Our closest neighbor in the solar system. And yet, it has always seemed distant and unreachable until now. Now, a private team of engineers is working to change that forever. They come from different backgrounds, countries and fields of expertise. But what unites them is true pioneering spirit and the will to try the impossible. Who are these guys? They are the part-time scientists and they are full-time crazy. Audi engineers are supporting them to build and test the Audi Lunar Quattro to make it ready for the moon's challenges in the context of the Google Lunar X Prize. Together, we will take collaboration and teamwork further and reach for the stars. Wherever this mission may take us, together we are following the true meaning of Horsesprung Drucktechnik. Join the part-time scientists on their mission, the mission to the moon. Yeah, so you can visit that site, you can visit that site, missiontothemoon.com. You will find some pretty cool information about our mission. It also gets updated frequently. So for example, one of the things that we did test quite recently was the thermal environment. So we went to a test stand at Audi where you could actually put the rover into like a really huge thermal chamber. And we looked at how the outside temperature is affecting the rover itself and how we made a bed that heats up to 120 degrees Celsius. And we also made sure that the heat is dissipated and the ways that we anticipated to be dissipated from the rover on the moon. So yeah, unfortunately I was really way too quick because I did some miscalculation. But if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, there's already one question standing at that microphone. So maybe you want to start and everybody else who has a question can go to the microphones there here in the front. And everybody else, please keep seated until the end of the Q&A. Thank you. Hello. But the video, you want to stream a high definition video back to Earth before your rover breaks down due to temperature issues. Yeah. How it stalls on orbit around the moon then to actually relay that to Earth or you have another way of well, having enough energy to because it takes a lot of bandwidth. You have a plan for that? Yeah, but the idea is to actually have the rover transmit the data either through the lander to Earth or through the rover itself. So the lander could act as a relay. You know, having a satellite in orbit doesn't make that much of a difference, you know, because most of the time it's not visible. And so you can't use it as a relay. So the plan is to have the direct communication with Earth, which is preferably and you can get it's not that much data that you actually need to send down with. So this is some of the things that we tested when we, for example, went to Tenerife is how much data rate do you actually need, you know? So there are some things that make life easier, for example, that everything is gray except for the flag of the Apollo landing or something like this. And yeah, there's nothing except the rover moves. So this helps with a prediction for the H264 algorithms. And so, yeah, with two megabits we already get a pretty decent picture. We try to, currently try to squeeze out a little bit more quality of it. Thank you. I think there's another question. Oh, hi. OK, I'm just asking, you're developing it or the rover with a very big car producer. So are you able to use any parts or modules or techniques of them? And then are you able to compare the tests they made maybe with cars or something like that? Or are you totally, yeah, developing from scratch and have to, yeah, just work for your own test values? Well, it's very tough to compare our rover to a car, mostly because of the lacking gasoline engine. But also, so the thing is that the concept of having, for example, the Crattle technologies is very similar in our rover. You have four wheels which can be independently adjusted. And so we can take the technology that is in the Quattro and put it into our rover, which is why it's called Audi Lunar Quattro. And also, Audi is helping us to reduce weight. They have a tremendous base of knowledge for reducing weight. And they also have amazing test sites where you can put the rover onto and do some tests. Some are more useful, some are less useful. The North Pole one is probably not that helpful. But Sahara desert or something like this is always very helpful. In the end, the idea is that we are challenging the Audi engineers to think a bit out of the box. This is not the ordinary project. It's a little bit like in the Formula 1 where the engineers are developing technology that will not go into the car itself. But thinking about the extremes makes it more interesting. Another question from that microphone, please. How are you going to test the rover for its stability against radiation? How are you going to test on Earth whether the rover will survive the radiation environment during the flight and on the moon? So the answer is that you can actually calculate the radiation that you are expecting for the mission. And so the most radiation is collected on the way to the moon. On the moon surface, you have just one rut per day, which is almost nothing, a little bit more than nothing. But yeah, it's not that much. And so the only thing you can do is you can actually use a regular cobalt-60 that you have laying around and put your electronics in front of it and see how it's affected by the total loss. And also go to particle accelerators and put it into the beam and see whether a single event effects kick in. In your video, you have shown an Atmel chip being soldered to a board. Is Atmel really selling space-grade components? Of course not, no. Or maybe actually it do. They have this one FPGA that is totally outdated that they are actually selling. Also they have a very interesting, they have another processor. So yes, they are selling space-grade components, but we're not using any of those. So the thing is we don't want to have space-qualified components. We just want to have components that work. And the way it is is that we will develop our own PCBs and then we do a full radiation test with those and see whether they fail or not. And it's actually, for example, if you have a very small, if you have very small processors, then the chances that you will be affected by a single event effects gets less and less because the cross-section of the bits is actually remained the same, but the die size got smaller and smaller. So the chances are getting better with new technologies for us. I think that's just another question there. Yes, in the advertisement of this talk there was a simulation about analog versus digital and about analog simulation of missions, but I didn't see much in the result of the talk. Can you maybe explain a little bit more about analog simulation in the context of missions? Well, the problem is it's analog in the sense that you can't recreate the full mission on Earth. It's impossible to get one-sixth of gravity and it's impossible to have the radiation environment, the thermal environment, and the gravitation and the surface with the magnetic field and static load, everything at once at the same time on Earth. And so what you're trying to achieve is to make something that is as close as you can get on Earth. For example, but the problem is what you usually run to is that you're developing a component in your lab and it's working in the lab perfectly, but then you're putting it into the field and you're realizing that your solution has all kinds of problems. Some of them are technical ones, but others are trivial ones. For example, the drop container falls down perfectly when it's sitting on a desk because it's perfectly straight and then you realize when the rover is standing a little uphill or there's a little twist, then in the rover or chassis, then it might fail. And those are the kind of things that you want to catch with the analog mission simulation. You can't always go to Tenerife to do the testing, so those analog mission simulations are actually rather expensive. So you want to make sure that everything you do there is carefully prepared and you find the more bugs you find, the better it is in some way because then you have found them. If everything works as planned, you don't know whether there was pure luck or perfect planning. So, yeah. Thank you. I think that were all questions. Thank you again, Carsten Becker. Just a short notice, so we are in the Space Village. There are some other cool space guys that you could meet. We are also making some kind of... We are inviting everyone to be there at like 7 p.m. this evening. We have some drinks and some snacks. And yeah, you're welcome to get there, ask us questions and have a chat with space guys. Thanks.