A fleet of teleoperated exploration rovers built by high-school engineers for NASA's Mars Exploration Analog at Marshall Space Flight Center and the HERA habitat at Johnson Space Center.
Astronaut analog crews drive the rovers from a remote station via WiFi with live camera feeds, deploying and retrieving 1U CubeSat payloads across simulated Martian terrain.
Uneven outdoor terrain — packed dirt, gravel, rocks, regolith simulant, slopes up to 15°.
Carry 10cm CubeSat payloads, up to 1 lb each, two per rover.
Live forward + mast camera feeds at 1080p with hardware-encoded H.264.
Three rovers, one operator station, configurable comm-delay simulation.
Mars Exploration Analog — outdoor facility at Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville AL. Real terrain, weather exposure, larger operating area.
Human Exploration Research Analog — indoor 8' × 8' enclosure at Johnson Space Center, Houston TX. Tight ceiling clearance, controlled environment.
Design philosophy: build for the harder case. If it works outdoors at Marshall, it works indoors at HERA by default. Camera mast lowers or removes for ceiling clearance.
OPERATOR STATION ROVER (×3) ┌──────────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────────────────────┐ │ Laptop │ WiFi (5GHz) │ Jetson Nano 4GB │ │ • Web dashboard │ ◄──────────────────────► │ • ROS 2 nodes │ │ • Gamepad input │ │ • Camera encode/stream (H.264) │ │ • Video feeds │ │ • rosbridge web server │ │ • Telemetry │ │ • Nav2 / autonomy (stretch) │ └──────────────────────┘ └─────────────┬───────────────────┘ │ USB / Ethernet ┌─────────────┴───────────────────┐ │ Raspberry Pi 3 │ │ • drive_controller node │ │ • steering_controller node │ │ • PCA9685 I²C (4 servos) │ │ • BTS7960 PWM (6 motors) │ │ • IMU / GPS / temp / current │ │ • CubeSat I²C bus │ └─────────────┬───────────────────┘ │ ┌──────────┬──────────┼──────────┬─────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ BTS7960 #1 BTS7960 #2 BTS7960 #3 PCA9685 … (M1, M2) (M3, M4) (M5, M6) (S1–S4)
Each cube is a standalone ESP32-powered unit — own battery, own sensors, own SD logging — that docks to the rover via a 4-pin JST and rides into the field.
Atmospheric characterization at site.
Site documentation, wide-angle stills.
Surface composition sampling.
Relay beacon / breadcrumb node.
Radiation mapping demo.
Crimp practice. 18 motor cables, 18 encoder leads, 12 servo extensions, 3 power harnesses. PCA9685 + BTS7960 bench tested. Software team verifies Jetson + ROS 2 setup.
Cut 30 lengths of 2020 extrusion. Assemble 18 wheel/motor units, 12 steering corners. Bench test each for encoder return and servo travel. CubeSat shells begin printing in parallel.
Six rocker-bogie arm pairs (mind the L/R mirroring). Three differential pivots on 8mm shafts with 608 bearings. Body frames assembled, wheels mounted, payload trays installed.
Electronics enclosures mounted. Jetson + Pi + drivers populated. Wiring routed through cable glands, enclosure sealed. PCBs conformal coated. Cameras mounted.
ROS 2 talking between boards. Servo center + max angle calibrated. Drive PID tuned with encoder feedback. Web dashboard, gamepad mapping, comm-delay simulation. CubeSat I²C docking verified.
Outdoor driving on school grounds. Multi-rover formations. Payload deploy/retrieve drills. Dust + weather resilience checks. Body panels finished. Software polish. Documentation drafted.
Final inspection. Packaging. Contingency buffer. Five additional weeks of slack against the week-22 mission-ready milestone.
From a minimum-viable rover-only build at $2.2k, up to the full combined air/ground curriculum with tooling and spares at $5.8k. Mark Cuban funded last year's prototype; HUNCH, DonorsChoose, and CFBISD CTE are in play for this round.
Engineering design pathway in CFBISD. Combined air/ground program for 2026-27. Multi-year NASA HUNCH partner. Featured by WFAA and NBC 5 DFW.
High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware. The fleet supports Mars Exploration Analog at Marshall and HERA habitat at Johnson Space Center.
METSAnauts (FDR April 27, 2026) prototyped the HERA Moonscape rover with funding from Mark Cuban. The 2026-27 fleet scales that work to three weatherized rovers serving two analog programs.