Looney Challenges will be posted 1-2 times per month during the 2015-2016 academic school year. The first will be posted Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015 with the final Challenge to be posted the beginning of June, 2015.

Teachers participating in the Challenges will receive an email confirming their submission of each challenge completed with total points earned.

Challengers can join at any time and can complete as many challenges as they choose.

Click here for previous Looney Challenge posts. Remember, you can choose any Challenge in any order until June 30, 2016.

May 11, 2016 

Welcome to Looney Challenges! 
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NASA Robotics Mining – May 11th, 2016

This will be the final Looney Challenge for the 2015-2016 school year!  We hope you have enjoyed learning and teaching your students about computing, computational thinking and the skills that will help them in a career that requires problem solving.  Please remember, the deadline to send an email to let us know which challenges you have completed with your students is June 30th!

Montana State University’s NASA Robotics Mining Team will be competing in the 6th annual NASA Robotics Mining Competition (RMC), May 18-20, 2016. Fifty teams from universities nationwide meet each year at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to test their Mars robots.  Since 2010, over 300 robots and 3000 students have competed.  The robots are designed by teams to dig in the simulated basaltic regolith and to also develop ideas to mine over a long period of time on Mars. 

MSU’s teams have had a successful history at the competition, winning the Joe Kosmos Award (the grand prize) in 2010 along with the2016 MSU NASA Robotics Mining Team On-Site Mining award.  MSU has also won:

1st Place – Systems Engineering Paper Award (2012)
2nd Place – Outreach Project Report Award (2012)
2nd Place – Efficient Use of Communications 
                   Power Award (2013)
Judges Innovation Award (2013)

Live stream the competition at the NASA Robotics Mining Competition website, or follow the competition’s live Tweets:

 NASA Robotics Mining Competition (RMC) website: http://www.nasa.gov/nasarmc

NASA Robotics Mining Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RoboticMiningCompetition/

Follow the Montana State University Robotics Team!  Go to their website at: https://www.facebook.com/NASA.RMC.MSU/.  To watch a video of the 2016 robot, go to the team’s Facebook page and click on the “Photos” link. Next, click on “Album” and you’ll see a link for “Videos.”  Click on the “Videos” link. The first two videos show the 2016 robot during testing in a sandpit at MSU.

Now that you have some background about the NASA Robotics competition – let’s do the Looney Challenge!

Let’s get started!

The Challenges are designed for all experience levels and is worth 10 points.

1.  Explore the RMC - Ask your students to go to the NASA Robotics Mining Competition website to learn more about the competition, http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/nasarmc/about.  Ask your students to answer the following questions:

  • What is regolith? What is buried in the regolith?
  • What will the robots mine on Mars? How will the “consumables” be used?
  • How does NASA benefit from the competition?
  • Tell us one challenge that the competitors have to solve when designing their robots?

2. Optional Activity (2 extra points) - NASA Computer Scientists and Engineers need to understand and “drive” robots, also known as rovers, on MARS.  Ask your students to play Robomind, a fun, interactive “game” to teach students how to code. The game is an example of how engineers drive a robot, https://www.robomindacademy.com/go/robomind/home.  Ask your students to do the  Robomind “Hour of Code” and answer the following question:

  • How difficult do you think it will be to drive a robot that is on Mars? Tell us two challenges that engineers from NASA have to consider?

3.  Now for the fun part. ROAM THE RED PLANET! 

  • Ask your students to explore the NASA’s M2K4: Roaming the Red Planet website, http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/m2k4/driverover/frameset.html.  Click on the “Home” tab and go to “Latest Images” to see what the Mars landscape looks like. You can also click on any of the tabs to learn about the challenges of landing the rover on Mars and why NASA chose to explore the planet.
  • After exploring Mars, go back to the M2K4 home page and click on the “Get in the Driver’s Seat” image. 
  • Choose a rover you want to drive – SPIRIT or OPPORTUNITY.
  • Using a mouse, click and hold the curser to move the rover. Drive the rover and find the features to learn what Spirit and Opportunity found on Mars (sorry, iPad and smartphone’s will not work with the website).  Hint: Follow the arrows to find “feathers.”  Ask your students:
    • Which rover did they choose to drive?
    • Describe three features you found on Mars (e.g. Stone Mountain is a feature)
    • What does the landscape look like?

To learn more about the Mars Rovers program:

  • The Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) has the latest information about the current Mars Rover at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/.  The interactive website has links to see where the rovers are located on the surface of Mars and where they are exploring. See the latest photographs and what the engineers are doing to solve problems.
  • Go to the Mars for Kids link, http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/participate/funzone/, Click on the “Take a Mars Adventure” game. What would you take to Mars? Find out how you can send your name and a message to Mars on MAVEN!

 How to earn points:

1) If you haven’t registered your class, please go to cs.montana.edu/looney-challenge and click on the “Register for Looney Challenges” link.

 2) Discuss with your class the difficulty of the activity. What did they learn? How difficult was the activity? Do they understand the concept(s)?

 3) Briefly, in a couple of sentences, describe in your email what happened during the activity? Did your students understand the concept(s)? Email your description to [email protected].

 4) If you want to attach an example, photographs of students working, or video of student’s outcomes, please send them as an attachment.

 5) We will send you a confirmation and provide your point total for the activity and your total points for Looney Challenges.

 For questions, please contact Sharlyn Izurieta, 994-4794 or send an email to [email protected]

 Deadline is June 30, 2016.

Previous Challenges

Interested in earning points from previous challenges?  

Click here to find previous Challenges. 

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