What’s been revealed so far is that there is going to be a new rover. However even “just” a new rover consists of dozens of subsystems like an onboard computer, a camera links, communications and of course motors. All these and many smaller parts have undergone multiple revisions and are now being integrated to flawlessly work together in an all-new self-contained system, the Asimov R3!

Building the very first prototype is always something special, as it is a bunch of engineers versus 2000+ parts and no manual, man page or warranty .
Besides a cool head, it requires a whole set of spare parts and things you would never think about needing in the first place. So we used this weekend to pack 8 big packages full of tools, parts and magic boxes. Now all things are wrapped up and on their way to our construction site this time in western Germany!

As Part-Time Scientists and first-time moon landers it’s our goal to get things done cheap, but still well-tested. Thus we love using hacks to test-drive systems before replacing them with more realistic but also expensive parts. In the case of the camera subsystem we put together a small ITX NVIDIA ION based setup that is going to help us get Asimov’s vision right before filling it up with much more expensive parts from a soon to-be-announced new partner!

You can never have enough screws of any kind, …

pins, …

flange bushs, and of course..

bearings

Hint: there is a sneak peak of Asimov R3 towards the end

Hell, yeah, it’s rocket science!
The Part-Time Scientists Team

The concept of a NerdNite came to life when a Boston scientists had come back to his favorite pub after a lengthy expedition overseas and he  was asked what he had experienced. So he made a short presentation with a zippy talk. It was such a successful event that they repeated it regulary. At some point the idea of short presentations on interesting topics at public spots reached New York and spread from there all over the world. It was the third time that the NerdNite took place in Germany and the first one in Erlangen.

As Michael from our Engineering team loves presentations and of course pubs he signed up immediately. He did a short presentation on our team, talked about who we are, what we are doing and even presented some of our more recent technical achievements which were presented at the DFKI in Bremen or the Euromold in Frankfurt as well.

The talk sparked a lot of interest in the audience showing that space exploration is ready for mainstream … again!

The music between the presentations was provided by [in]anace and fuge! and is available freely on their websites.

Watch the 80% HD-Version on Youtube.

Watch our Rover drive at a steady 3.33 cm/s around the office. 3 times faster than Sojouner.
If you followed us on Facebook you’ll already know that getting R2 moving took a lot more effort than what Asimov makes it look like.

If we caught your attention, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and our Team Blog.

Watch the almost HD-Version.

But let not make this to easy on you, to give you hints on our future developments you will have to look into one of our Flyers.

You can find all Flyers we used at the ILA in our Media Section.

Let us welcome this second year of Rocket Science with a loud

To celebrate we’re giving away free Part-Time scientists shirts on Facebook somewhere along this week!

If we cought your attention follow us on , or our team Blog.

But first…

… let’s finish what we started. In less than a day, the ILA is going be opened for thousands of interested visitors. All predictions are that this is going to be the highest-attended ILA since it started a little over 100 years ago!

In addition to this. we do stick to our roots, which is why Arne Reiners, the great mind behind our FPGA developments, is our representative at the Berlin LinuxTage 2010. On June 24, the first day of the 2009 LinuxTage, the Team Part-Time Scientists officially announced their participation in the Google Lunar X-Prize.
Looks like we’re in for a pretty successful first anniversary!

At ILA, we not only present our latest prototypes and developments. but also reveal which new partners are on board. Each of them is the best in their field, from high end number crunching and physics simulations to high quality rapid prototyping. We’d like to welcome: nvidia, LeitOn, 3DConnection, Erich-Huber, Crosslink Fibertech and 1zu1Prototypen. The corresponding press releases are going to be published as of next week.
We appreciate our sponsors’ and partners’ decision to support us in our goal to win the Google Lunar X-Prize!

Come on and visit us at our booth (Hall 9, 305A), on Facebook, Twitter, and our new Webpage.

Almost one year ago, coinciding withLinuxTag 2009, we officially became competitors in the GLXP. This year’s LinuxTag is coming up soon, and we decided to descend on the Internationales Congress Centrum Berlin after last years visit again.

This time, though, there will be a presentation by our very own embedded development and communications expert: Arne Reiners.

At the core of the presentation are FPGAs, field-programmable gate arrays. What these “re-programmable chips”, in more general terms, can do, how they can withstand the harsh lunar environment and why they’re the future of space hardware will be explained in detail by Arne. He’s hoping for lots of questions, so please bring your thinking caps!

When and where?

LinuxTag 2010, Friday, June 11, 5:30 pm – 6:00 pm

or on YouTube shortly after!

We hope to see you there!

Germany’s first GLXP team is gonna rock Germany’s top aviation and aerospace trade show:
from June 8 to 13, members of the Team Part-Time Scientists will be present at this year’s Internationale Luft- und Raumfahrtausstellung!

Find us in Hall 9, booth 305a, where PTS engineers and team leader Robert Boehme are going to reveal the new lunar rover prototype Asimov Jr. R2.

Complete with new and improved features such as:
• a solar panel that can be directed at various angles towards the sun or earth
• a phased array antenna for Earth-Moon communication
• redesigned wheel suspension
• and some more!

Oh, and if you need a rest after all the marvelling and talking at our booth …

… here’s a teaser of other things ILA has in store for visitors:

Youtube

We hope to see you there!