A team of young Peruvians, who are part of the Deimos Perú interdisciplinary project, participated in the 2018 NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge, an international competition that took place in Alabama, USA on 13 and 14 April.
This contest, organized by NASA, sets participants an engineering design challenge that seeks to involve innovators from around the world in the next phase of human space exploration. It also encourages them to create a human-powered vehicle that is designed to traverse the simulated surface of another world, i.e. in environments similar to those on Mars and the Moon.
The creation of the Peruvian prototype – consisting of a human-powered vehicle – involved students of different specialties from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), as well as an industrial welding expert from Senati.
During the competition, participants had to demonstrate that their units were able to run on rocks, sand and granite, among others terrains. For this reason, the vehicle was made of the highest quality aluminum, which is strong, but not as rigid as steel, which means that it is shock resistant. As for the tires, they have an aluminum and rubber rim.
About the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge
The Rover Challenge seeks to inspire participants to become engineers to design NASA's next generation space systems. In this respect it identifies opportunities, challenges and decision-making that future planetary explorers will face in space. More than 10,000 students participate in the competition, which takes place once a year.
About Deimos Perú
This project initially started from the idea of a group of industrial designers from the PUCP and began to be developed in mid-2016. Today it is made up of an interdisciplinary team that also includes young people from Communications and Geography.
It is worth mentioning that Deimos was awarded the License for Use of the Peruvian Trademark in 2017 in order to participate in the NASA contest.