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Academic SpotlightBy: Dr. Julie EllisArtemis Prime - WKU Regolith RobotWhen we started this project, noneof us had even heard of “regolith,”and look how much we’ve learned!Regolith is the dusty materialcovering most of the surface of the moon. Unpacked,it has the texture of talcum powder;packed, it’s more like concrete. And NASA wantsto mine this stuff, to provide minerals and otheruseful materials for a lunar habitat. To get goodideas to help them figure out how to do that, theycreated the NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition,first held at the college level in May 2010 atKennedy Space Center in the Astronaut Hall ofFame. The competition caught the eye of Dr.Kevin Schmaltz, Professor of Mechanical Engineeringat WKU.Throughout the WKU engineering programs,students master their technical and professionalskills by doing projects. Juniors in mechanical engineeringuse competition projects to hone andprove their skills at designing, building and testingprototypes, as well as their skills at project managementand working as a team. One team of mechanicalengineers—Christine Gries, AmandaHuff and Whitney Tyree— chose the LunaboticsCompetition as their junior project. They took upthe challenge of making a machine that would dig,carry and deposit lunar soil—regolith—to NASA’sspecifications: at least 10 kilograms in less than 15minutes.www.alumni.wku.edu | WKU SPIRIT | 31