Enterprise Program at Michigan Tech

❓ Ever wonder how the Multiplanetary Innovation Enterprise tests its projects?

🥶 The Multiplanetary Innovation Enterprise designs, tests, and implements robotic technologies for extracting and using local resources, construction, and characterization in extreme environments.

🌛 These environments currently include Lunar, Martian, and flooded subterranean environments on Earth. MINE works in multidisciplinary groups to develop technology to perform tasks in extreme environments on Earth and on other planets. Extreme environments include the space environment (vacuum, temperature extremes, lunar dust, minerals, and lunar and Martian ice), underground remote operation and autonomy, as well as unstructured and GPS-denied environments on Earth and other planetary bodies, as well as exploring flooded mines.

🥇 They participate in NASA’s lunabotics competition, build and test robotic vehicles and technologies directly related to state-of-the-art research for a variety of customers, including governmental, commercial, and internal.

Some of their biggest past competitions include:

🚀 N.A.S.A. R.M.C. Lunabotics Competition
This competition is held every year in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center with 50 teams from universities across the nation. This competition is used to simulate mining on the surface of the moon and the challenges it presents.
🚧 TRENCHER
The Trencher is a bucket ladder-style excavator designed for use in Lunar soil simulant, or regolith.
🤿 D.I.V.E.R. (Deep Investigation Vehicle for Energy Resources)
This is a safe and effective robotic solution for exploring and inspecting flooded mine shafts.

▶️ Learn more about the Multiplanetary Innovation Enterprise: https://mine.geo.mtu.edu/