MECH 2 students recreate historic Cassini mission

The winning team, B4Electronics, competing with their "spacecraft", Orange is the New Black .

The winning team, B4Electronics, competing with their “spacecraft”, Orange is the New Black .

Wednesday, January 25th, MECH 2 students took part in the annual MECH 223 design competition. This year, students were asked to recreate NASA’s historic 2005 Cassini mission — a mission that successfully landed a probe on Saturn’s largest moon Titan. As part of this simulation, students had to design a 3D printed Launcher and an autonomous Orbiter spacecraft capable of deploying a set of standard Landers — or probes.

Represented by balls, 20 teams had to shoot their probes across a 160 square-foot table and have it “orbit” around the fake Titan, which was simulated by a funnel. Each team was timed and graded on the machine’s ability to shoot three different-sized balls into the funnel (or Titan’s orbit).

CBC Vancouver, Global News, and the Discovery Channel were also on site to cover the event, as well as to conduct interviews with some of our professors and student teams. When asked about by CBC about the learning outcomes of this project , MECH 2 Coordinator Dr Agnes d’Entremont stated that the goal of the project was to teach students the need to minimize costs, consider weight restrictions, while ultimately ensuring maximum performance ability.

The winning team, B4Electronics, received the overall highest score with their “spacecraft,” Orange is the New Black.

See CBC coverage of the event here. (Note: Coverage of the MECH 223 competition begins at 50:00).

See more about the competition here as well: Global News, Surrey Now


 

More photos from the event can be found here: MECH 2 Design Competition: Titan Endurance