Club 'shoots for the moon' by making robot in NASA competition

Everything is silent. The surface is cold and dusty and over the horizon Earth and beyond.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were able to feel what its actually like to traverse the moons surface, but a group of ISU students is now trying to do the next best thing send their new creation to the moon in their stead.

The ISU Lunabotics Club, led by Garret Schieber, senior in mechanical engineering and president of the Lunabotics Club, is working on a completely automated machine that has the potential of opening a path to a trillion dollar industry via space mining and colonization.

Schiebers team is one of 19 teams slated to compete at NASAs 2015 Robotic Mining Competition.

The clubs results have been on the rise in recent years.

Its been a great ride these last four years, Schieber said. Getting to watch the club grow from a group that had no awards to a group with many, on top of being one of the best in the competition.

When the time comes for these robots to be deployed into space, they will ride the new state of the art Orion spacecraft.

Once in space, they can be taken to the moon or even farther.

On the moon, the robots can begin paving the way for mankind.

Through the use of 3D printing, they will be able to start building shelters that will eventually be covered by lunar soil, which is called regolith.

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Club 'shoots for the moon' by making robot in NASA competition