About the program

The Aerospace Jam 2021-22 is a competition for high school teams across Wisconsin to use drones on a NASA Artemis-inspired simulated moon mission. The program is co-sponsored by the NASA Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium and the Milwaukee Bucks. Our goal is to recruit students from diverse backgrounds and cultivate a welcoming and inclusive event that will foster meaningful interactions among teammates and teams.

Challenge

In September, teams will be provided with a drone and sensor kit to design and build a data-acquiring platform for a “landing” on the South Pole of the Moon. Monthly meetings and technical support will be provided throughout the fall and early spring semesters. In spring 2022, teams will compete in a day-long event at the Milwaukee Bucks’ Fiserv Forum. All team members will be provided free tickets to the Bucks game later that same day.

Specific team challenges will include:

  • specific drone maneuverability tasks
  • sensing and locating objects within the flight area
  • measuring objects within the flight area
  • mission planning
  • communicating team progress and goals to public via social media
  • providing technical support to other teams

There will be several awards that teams can compete for:

  • Team Grand Artemis – overall winner – best combination of day-of performance, social media score, and mission planning. The overall winning team will get to watch the Bucks game from one of the Milwaukee Bucks Suites at the Fiserv Forum.
  • Team Artemis Navigator – day-of winner – best score for day-of performance
  • Team Orion Aware – social media winner – best communication strategy and social media performance
  • Team Lunar Luminary – Mission planning – best mission plan

Scoring

Teams will be judged in five different areas with a total of 100 points available. Read more.

Aerospace Jam Commitment Form

The Aerospace Jam Commitment Form will be available Monday, July 5. The commitment clarifies the time, resources, and travel commitments for the 2021-22 Aerospace Jam Competition and asks teams for (non-binding) confirmation that they are able to meet these requirements. Teams need to have a committed faculty leader, 5-8 students, and approximately 2 hours per week to commit to the program. Click on the following link to the commitment form [TBA}.

Tech support

Technical support for the competition will be provided in multiple ways. First, we’ll have Q&A sessions as part of each monthly program. Second, we will be opening an online forum where teams can post questions, respond to other teams’ issues, and get answers from a set of volunteers who will be monitoring the forum. Finally, serious technical issues can be brought up to Eric and Mike to handle if there is something that is completely stopping a team’s progress.

Part of the challenge is locating needed resources and help from online communities on the web. There are multiple support sites for help with Arduinos and sensors, e.g. Arduino Forum and r/arduino subreddit, which can provide help on thorny hardware and software issues.