The Evolution from Asimov Junior R1 (front) to Asimov Junior R2 (back) throughout the year
2010 was a big year for the Part-Time Scientists (PTS). In January, we had just gotten done presenting the first-ever privately built moon rover prototype, “Asimov Jr. R1”, at the Chaos Communication Congress in December 2009.
We put Asimov Junior 2 together. More than 1000 parts, over 400 different pieces.
In March, we presented our rover prototype, technology, and mission at the HMI in Hannover, Germany, in June at the ILA (International Aerospace Exhibition) in Berlin, Germany, and in November at the VISION expo in Stuttgart, Germany.
After the production of our 1:10 Lander Model it is cleaned.
In December, the team just recently introduced our first Jules lander prototype at Euromold, the World Fair for Moldmaking and Tooling, Design and Application Development, in Frankfurt, Germany.
The Lander as a 1:10 Model
Ever since the Evadot.com GLXP ranking was created, PTS has been in the top five teams. All this work, together with our “Hell yeah it’s rocket science” media science outreach program, earned us a lot of media attention last year.
We like that, because it helps keep the GLXP as well as space exploration and research in the public’s awareness, and it helps our Evadot.com ranking.
Robert Böhme and Sebastian Rattay where invited twice to MotorFM for an Interview.
This year we had our first radio interview with MotorFM, and two more since then, another with MotorFM and with the Deutsche Welle. We had our first TV interview in 2010, with a regional TV station, RTL Regional, then our first interview with a national TV station (for all Germany), Spiegel TV, and finally our first interview with an international TV station, Arte.
Karsten Becker talking about Asimov and the rover developement.
Two more interviews with VorarlbergOnline and Servus TV round out our TV appearances for the year.
Our successes this year generated a lot of attention from newspaper’s Internet sites and blogs as well. We gave interviews to Financial Times Deutschland, Spiegel Online, Frankfurter Rundschau, and the Berliner Zeitung.
Robert explaining the Rover at the ILA.
In addition, we were featured by oreillyblog, thelaunchpad, Raumfahrer.net, the Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), mindmeister.com, kisswin.de, juraforum.de, pressebox.de, presseecho.de, The Local, and Portal to the Universe.
Robert at the ILA.
All this media attention has helped us build support for the PTS team; we started the year with about 20 members and 8 partnerships and are looking to close the year with over 70 members and 20 partners.
Asimov testing himself and his wheels on the lunar surface.
We also started our Facebook and Twitter presences in the second half of 2010, and we already have more than 10,000 fans on Facebook. We’ve been busy, but we have more work to do and more people involved than ever, so we’re looking forward to more rocket science, space & lunar exploration research, and science outreach.
Stay tuned.
Author: Aram Khalili
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