As NASA and the private space industry race to put people on Mars, architects and industrial designers have already begun looking ahead to where humans will live once we get to the Red Planet. For example, last year NASA held an architectural competition to design a 3D printed habitat on Mars that could house four astronauts. The winning design was the Ice House, a luminous plastic igloo sheathed in a protective layer of ice.
But the challenge of building a comfortable, live-able environment doesn’t just start when the astronauts reach Mars. The journey is estimated to take six to eight months in a transit habitat, followed by an 18 to 20 month stay on the ground—until the planets align for the same return trip.
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!
Make a robot friend with Adafruit’s CRICKIT – A Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It’s an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express, FEATHER and other platforms to make and program robots with CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. Start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends your boards so you can still use all the goodies on the microcontroller, now you have a robotics playground as well.
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!