Ottawa students get chance to control real lunar rover in simulated mission

A group of students at A.Y. Jackson Secondary School in Kanata have won a national space competition. The reward: an out-of-this-world opportunity to remotely control a Canadian-made lunar rover prototype, in a simulated moon-like environment.

The simulation involves a mission in which a rover has landed on the moon to seek out ice deposits. On this crew, Alexa Walcer is a navigation specialist in a team whose role will decide the rover's movement.

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"We've tried to go around this one rock multiple times and it's giving us a lot of trouble," said the Grade 9 student. "It is stressful because we have to make a lot of the big decisions. It's a lot of teamwork and lot of communication and I think my class is really good at that already."

Once the navigators choose a path across the rocky lunar terrain, pilots, like Kaya Caite-Brisard, must input the correct commands and initiate the rover to move.

"When we're going on an angle, you have to move a lot more than you would think because the wheels slip," she said. "I don't want to get the rover to flip over. If something happened to it, that would be kind of scary."

At the mission control center, there are payload specialists, scientists, and controllers, all with specific tasks that require complete collaboration.

The simulation to replicate a real space mission uses a real rover; a prototype in a lab in Stratford Ont., designed by Canadensys. The company received a contract from the Canadian Space Agency to construct Canada's inaugural lunar rover, set for a mission to the Moon no earlier than 2026.

These students are members of the winning groups of the Lunar Rover Research Challenge, a national space competition sponsored by Let's Talk Science, Canadensys Aerospace Corporation, and Avalon Space, with support from the Canadian Space Agency. More than 16,000 students from across Canada participated.

A.Y. Jackson Secondary School was one of four schools that were chosen for the program. The others were Markham District High School in Markham, Ont., Lisgar Middle School in Mississauga, Ont., and St. John Brebeuf Regional Secondary School in Abbotsford, B.C.

"We really want to show students that to get into the space industry, it's not just a one trick pony. It's not just astronauts; there is a lot out there that we can do and everyone can bring a valuable skill to that field," says Floridane Dion, Let's Talk Science education specialist.

For the students' teacher, Erica Hills, the chance to navigate a rover is an activity that puts science into practice.

"I really can't take credit for any of that; that's the students," she said. "And maybe it will plant the seed, where some of them may go on to get involved in science later in life."

This simulated mission came with some tense moments. The rover nearly became stuck, there were also communication delays, and temperature warnings, but some success too — they found what the ice they were looking for.

"It was really exciting! We managed to put heads together and we found water," says Kaya, in a discovery which has also uncovered a future of possibilities. "I definitely probably want to go into aerospace engineering and robotics. The field of robotics would interest me the most."