All team members participated in our public outreach events and took time to help prepare for the activities. This was either by doing research, buying materials, setting up activity stations, setting and clearing rooms for activities, and writing presentation slides. The total amount of time that we participated in active public outreach was slightly more than 11 hours. 

Public outreach is a key part of NASA’s overall mission and specifically the Artemis plan. It serves as one of many ways to help inspire a new generation of Explorers, Engineers, Technicians, and Creators. The Sonoma Lunabotics team participated in several outreach events, reaching almost 150 students from a wide range of ages and locations. The students had positive reactions to the events, and were informed about the ongoing efforts at NASA and Sonoma State University. 

Hayward High School

For 9th - 12th grade outreach, we demonstrated our Mining robot for four different groups of Hayward High school seniors. This public outreach took place on March 16th at Sonoma State University. For this outreach, Jesus Perez Quintero, Forest Yllescas, Jason Knight-Han, and Walter Foster were present and participated. 

Dr. Sudhir Shrestha, Chair of the Department of Engineering Science at Sonoma State University, introduced the groups of students to the presenters for this outreach. There were two other presenters that came to present and answer questions about their projects on this day. Both of the other projects were STEM related. 

For the activity, we allowed the students to take the Xbox 360 controller that controls our mobility system on our robot and drive the wheels, all while it was mounted safely on a platform. Most teenagers are familiar with this kind of controller and were quickly able to understand and use it. In addition, a demonstration on PWM and how it relates to the various electrical components was conducted. We explained to them how the robot works over a Wi-Fi connection and how we were able to do this using the software and hardware that we have.

We also took time to answer questions that the kids had. Most kids wanted to know if the robot was actually going to the Moon. We clarified this and said that it wasn’t, and that this project was only for the Lunabotics competition for NASA, which is meant to inspire the Artemis generation (them) to take interest in STEM related subjects and NASA. The feedback we received from these groups was positive. Most kids that came by stated that they thought the project was “very cool” and that they would like to do something similar when they get to college. 

Children's Museum of Sonoma County

For K-4th grade outreach, we participated in the “Space Odyssey for Galactic Explorers” event at the Children’s Museum here in Santa Rosa. The event consisted of younger students, mainly 3 – 10 years old. For this event, our activities focused on space rovers. We had a “build your own paper space rover cut-out” and we had a curiosity rover coloring sheets for the smaller children. We also brought our 8 x 8 inch mini-rover that we made to demonstrate how the Arduino code could be changed to effectively make the rover take different drive paths. This was demonstrated for the kids that were a little older that were also present during the event.

For this event, there were also several other people presenting their projects, which were science and space focused as well. There were an estimated 400 people in attendance. We counted over 40 kids that came to our demonstration table to color the curiosity rover or build a paper space rover. 

Jason Knight-Han and Walter Foster attended and helped the kids put together the paper space rover by first demonstrating the correct steps to assemble it, then assisting the kids throughout the process. We explained that at some point in the future, NASA plans to send an actual space rover to the Moon and eventually to Mars as part of the Artemis missions, and that they are the Artemis generation. The activity seemed to be successful. The younger children seemed to have been the most receptive to the activities, most likely because of the hands-on experience they were able to have. A majority of the children’s questions were in regard to how the mini-rover worked and how fast it can go. 

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Santa Rosa Middle School

For 5th - 8th grade outreach, we did a presentation of our project and did a live demonstration. This Outreach was performed on April 6th at 5:00pm in the senior design room at Sonoma State University, and lasted till about 6:00pm. There were a total of  6 students (ages 10-13 years old) that attended, along with Dr. Laura Peticolas (Associate Director at EdEon Sonoma State University, CubeSat research). For this outreach, all the RMC team members were present and participated in the activities.

Our presentation was structured in the following way: Introduction, Our Engineering Goals, The Process, Overcoming Challenges, and our Results. For this presentation, we also created a 7-slide document to talk to. For the introduction, we identified who each one of us were, where we grew up, what we wanted to be when we were in middle school, and how we got into engineering. We talked about our personal goals of this engineering process, and what the hardest challenge for each of us was and as a team. We explained NASA’s goal of trying to return and live on the moon, and their plans to one day go to Mars. Furthermore, we explained that the Lunabotics competition has become an annual event and is NASA’s way of trying to build a workforce for these future missions. We also spent time talking about how ISRU is a key technology for enabling sustainability to the Artemis Mission, and that ISRU is the key purpose of the Lunabotics style robots.

During this outreach, we were able to perform a live demonstration of our robot over zoom for the kids. We set up the robot on the grass at SSU. Bryce Jensen was on the zoom event on his phone outside with the robot. He effectively demonstrated the robot working for the students, answering any questions they had.
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For the activity, we had a live Q and A at the end of the presentation for 15 minutes. The kids had plenty of questions for us, but we also took the time to ask them questions. We asked them “What do they want to do when they grow up?” and “What are some of the things that interest them?”. Two of the kids had interest in space exploration, and computer gaming. The other kids had interest mainly in art, music, and sports. The feedback from the middle school kids was the best. We received emails later from Dr. Peticolas stating how much fun the kids had during the zoom event, and that at some point in the future she would like us to do another one.