This demonstration effectively bridges the gap between academic theory and empirical space research by simulating the primordial conditions of planetary formation. It showcases how university-led innovation remains the essential catalyst for NASA’s most ambitious exploration goals.
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UCF Lunabotics Qualifiers 2026 Competition Runs (May 17th)Ajouté :
step for man, one time for mankind.
>> No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long range exploration of space.
>> And liftoff of Artemis 1, we rise together back to the moon and beyond.
>> Now it is time to take longer strides.
Time for a great new American enterprise.
>> Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.
This is a research flight um suborbital by Blue Origin. So they fly their New Shepard rocket that they fly, you know, the suborbital astronauts on um and every once in a while they still fly research flights. And so we um through a NASA program, the NASA flight option program, um we obtained a spot on this research flight to put our payload. And the payload um basically levitates a cloud of dust and is able to keep it in place without ever touching it for a long time. So in this flight specifically, we are demonstrating the technology and our hope would be in the future um to run astrophysical experiments um to measure the interaction of um light with clouds of dust that are homogeneous. Um and you know that would inform a lot of for example the JWST um data that is coming in because in the IR in the infrared specifically um large grains of dust interact with light um and so that's what we're looking at.
We're creating an artificial cloud of dust and you know this is a technology in itself. So that's a technology we're testing on the flight. If we have to run this under microgravity conditions, otherwise the dust would sort itself by weight. It would basically not stay in place because of Earth's gravity. But once you're in microgravity, you get a chance to actually levitate a homogeneous cloud of dust. It has several applications. if you are able to levitate clouds of dust. So there's applications for atmospheric research, astrophysics research and the one I haven't mentioned yet is also planetary research for example in rings. Um you have these type of environments where you have several particles interacting homogeneously.
Um but also formation early stages of planet formation. um when the star forms and around the star there's still the gas and dust that's where the planets will form later and in these early stages it's really just clouds of dust interacting and the dust colliding growing I'm interested in using this technology for research down the line so this technology was developed as part of you know the scientific community understanding okay we need an undisturbed clouds of dust dust so that we can do this research to understand how the dust behaves when it's un you know really untouched. Um so I you know I'm excited to down the line use this technology for actual research. Uh and then number two, I think it's very exciting also to see the students have the opportunity to work on actual hardware and the solutions they come up with. Um and just the contribution that they make um and the contribution that the project makes to their education. Um I think that's a great motivation as well.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on. Come on.
Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat.
I study asteroids and comets and uh mostly asteroids that could threaten Earth with an impact but at the same time could also be used for mining for space mining because they come really close to the earth and they have very little gravity. So, not only are they a potential threat to Earth, which we are addressing, but they are also a potential resource. Water is the most precious material outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Once you can uh extract it from the surfaces of asteroids and then deliver it to the Earth's orbit cheaper than it costs to launch, then you're going to have a self-sustaining space economy where the water will be produced, you know, from the asteroids, broken up into hydrogen and oxygen, used as fuel by all these satellites, and then you would not have to put it into orbit. Putting things into orbit is very expensive. Mining asteroids is very expensive. But once you uh improve the technology so that the mining is cheaper than putting things into orbit, boy, you're going to open up all kinds of stuff. Right now, there is no asteroid asteroid large enough to uh wipe out civilization that is threatening us. So, but as a civilization, we must worry about because large impacts have happened and will happen again unless we avoid them and unless we change the the course of the threatening asteroid. But those are also the ones that we have studied in most detail and those are not threatening us right now. Um along those lines, the NASA NASA's DART mission was designed to deflect an asteroid from its course with an impact. And it was a uh an experiment to try to determine if this technique would help would work. It was a spectacular success. It worked extremely well. The impact of of the NASA spacecraft onto this small asteroid that was orbiting a bigger one changed its orbit a lot more than we had anticipated. And so this technique is much more promising than we thought it was. And it is our number one technique to deflect asteroids that would threaten Earth. I became very interested in comets and maybe because when I was 10 years old, comedic came and it was so spectacular. My father woke my brother and I up and we went out and this spectacular comet that went from the horizon to the cenis. Um, and so since I was a child, I've been interested in astronomy specifically in comets. I started started studying comets. My PhD thesis was on that. And then there were these strange objects that were kind of like comets but and they had the orbits of comets and I found asteroids very interesting. So I shifted more into asteroids. Although I haven't left comets completely, I am part of a proposal that is being led by Cornell University to build the uh spacecraft to go to the nucleus of a comet, not an asteroid, and bring back a sample of it.
Boy, did it feel good to hire do my first two hires, which were uh Dan Brit, Professor Brit, and Professor Fernandez.
So, we have grown fast. Um we are um we're very proud of the fact that two of our um kind of junior faculty members uh have gotten the largest NASA grant or NASA contract that UCF has ever gotten for $35 million to build a rover that would study a volcanic area on the moon.
It's called Lunar Vice. And that's Professor Donald and Hannah and Professor Adrien Dove. So, uh, I'm just like, wow. I I cannot claim any credit for how good these people are, except that I did hire them.
So, I've been at the right place at the right time, and it's been very rewarding. I'm just uh really grateful because uh UCF has been um the best decision of my career. uh accepting the job at UCF. It it kind of looked good at the time, but boy, I had no idea that it was going to be this good. So, I I am grateful for UCF for giving me uh a home to develop this group and uh that I'm so proud of.
Hey, hey, hey. Yeah.
Heat.
Heat. Heat.
Hey, hey, hey.
So, In this paper, uh, we actually looked at the first orbital test flight launch of the, uh, Starship rocket.
That's SpaceX's new prototype rocket.
That rocket is actually part of NASA's Aremis program to take us back to the moon. I think folks are probably familiar. That launch actually didn't use like a water deluge or water suppression system on the launchpad. And so, there was a pretty sizable failure of that launch pad. Basically left a huge crater. And so our research was going in and figuring out what exactly happened there and doing the forensics on what is the failure mechanism and what does that tell us about when we land a vehicle that size on the moon. So this new class of landers that we're using as we go back to the moon are significantly larger than what we saw during the you know 1960s and '7s during the Apollo program. And so with that comes higher levels of thrust, you know, bigger engines, bigger vehicles, which, you know, unfortunately kicks up more and more dust when you land on the surface. And and so a lot of my research is studying how can we better understand the equations that govern how much uh dust is kicked up and where does that dust go and and what does it do to equipment when it impinges on it. So, um, this Starship launch in particular was just kind of a unique data set where you have a brand new launch vehicle from a private company designed to take astronauts to and from the lunar surface. So, we're able to use that launch and what the aftermath of that launch to help inform those equations and models. So, there's a a lot of work going on. A lot of folks around the country are studying this problem of how do you land and launch a rocket from a a dusty lowgravity vacuum environment of the moon. I think this research in particular uh it does sort of give us some insights into those models of what we can expect for exhaust velocities and level of thrust. Um but I I think particularly as we look at building uh like landing our launch pads on the moon if we start to build a base this launch kind of shows us the importance of having maybe breathable launch pads which was more or less the the failure mechanism that we saw here on Earth uh where you end up with a huge pressure buildup underneath uh a concrete launch pad that kind of helps inform the designs that we're going to use eventually on the moon uh once we start to build those more permanent lunar infrastructure uh pieces.
Heat.
Heat.
Heat. Heat.
UCF was founded in 1963 with a clear purpose to prepare the talent, research, and innovations required to land humans on the moon. From the beginning, UCF has been a startup with a mission. This has always been an institution fueled by people with a sense of urgency. People who dare to imagine and are driven to create the future. Here at UCF, our motto has long been reach for the stars.
It is more than symbolic. It represents a future where explorers don't just look at the stars, they work among them.
Together, our leadership, ideas, and vision will accelerate discovery and chart a new trajectory. The breakthroughs imagined here can define the next century of space exploration.
Just 35 miles east of where we are right now. We took our first steps towards landing a man on the moon. Now, with talent and minds gathered at Space View, we are preparing for the next giant leap.
Heat.
Heat.
I don't H.
Hoping he me up.
We're building rovers. We're building lunar systems. We're building construction systems with the intent of having rovers we can use on the moon.
Build on the moon, build out of materials we've got on the moon so that we don't have to ship all of the materials up there. For the larger scale projects, I'm working with Capstone and senior design projects with Florida Space Grant. And all the software is written, the hardware is designed, the systems are put together, and they're assembled. They're all done by the students. Capstone and senior design teams do the actual work. They design and build. They collaborate across the teams. Everything is student design. On the education side, it's what can we do to fill in gaps that students are missing. Uh there's a lot of stuff that happened and is really kind of a recent development where things don't break.
Kids don't have the idea, the concept of taking something apart. They don't have things they can go take apart. So there's assembly, working, building stuff, putting stuff together. We found that people my side of 40 have done a lot of that. People the other side of 40 from where I am have not. So, we've got projects for folks to go put stuff together like that. We started out trying to take rovers like what's behind me and use those with undergraduates, uh, freshmen. Their schedule was full.
We started looking at high schools and ran out to a teacher that said, "My elementary school kids can go build this." So, she is a fifth grade STEM teacher. We have fifth grade classes building these robots. The purple one back here was built by the fifth grade STEM class. It works as well as the other ones. So the teachers created the lesson plan or we provide them with drawings. We don't provide them with uh detailed instructions or a video or anything. They've got to figure it out from the drawings. And so fifth graders are figuring out transmissions, gearboxes, building the electronics, putting everything together. And it's the first time they've done anything like that. And they're absolutely awesome at it.
>> So I do a lot of the mechanical design uh that happens with these robots. And now most of the design came to us by uh other people who are also working on these. that sometimes a little change needs to be made or a part needs to be updated and that usually falls onto me.
I always enjoy working with students.
They're every time smarter than you think they are. Um, and really catch on really well and easily and they love figuring stuff out. Um, generally speaking, it's a great time and they're all really smart and fun to work with.
All the software stuff is pretty much provided for them. this project hopefully will get to a point where we can have maybe not elementary school students but other grade school students starting to do a little bit of software editing and changing for learning. Uh but for the elementary school students that are doing it now they're all doing assembly. So with the software there is an interface that the user has to interact with whether that can be a phone app that can be a desktop app uh or it could be any kind of application you need to be able to have some kind of system where you can say I want to move forward I want to move backwards I want to go left right or I want to speed up or I want to slow down. This has been worked on by a lot of different teams so it's been passed around a lot and then there's a lot of work that's been built up over the years and stuff. So if you were building everything from scratch, it would take you a long time. But uh what we do is like split task up into man manageable sizes. So each week you have something to do. You get to see some of the groups of kids split up and work together on this project that if you were doing by yourself like me, it might take you a while, but for them they're enjoying every step of the way and they're doing it much much faster than at least I could by myself.
>> It's really fun. It's really rewarding um because you can see all the kids in and their mind working and watching them build and maybe some of them aren't interested at the start but by the end they've kind of gotten like involved as they see the the robot, you know, becoming becoming a real robot and actually able to move around. And so it's really it's really rewarding >> being able to work with these robots that not only are setting up future engineers to develop stuff to work on the moon and setting them up for their future. Um but it's also directly developing technologies that will be useful on the moon.
>> Watching them learn is very very it's it's it's just from my point of view it's absolutely fantastic to go watch.
There's a problem to go solve. They sit down they go solve the problem. They work through the problem. You'll see we give them an exploded view or an old style, just an expanded view of what the parts go like and they'll be up there bringing the parts up, holding them up against the picture on the wall and putting things together that way.
They're mentored in how to use the tools installed by the students that we've got here. But the students of the elementary school kids are doing the work themselves, putting things together.
I don't know.
aftermath of that launch to help inform those equations and models. So there's a a lot of work going on. A lot of folks around the country are studying this problem of how do you land and launch a rocket from a a dusty lowgravity vacuum environment of the moon. I think this research in particular uh it does sort of give us some insights into those models of what we can expect for exhaust velocities and level of thrust. Um but I I think particularly as we look at building uh like landing our launch pads on the moon if we start to build a base this launch kind of shows us the importance of having maybe breathable launch pads which was more or less the the failure mechanism that we saw here on Earth uh where you end up with a huge pressure buildup underneath uh a concrete launch pad. that kind of helps inform the designs that we're going to use eventually on the moon uh once we start to build those more permanent lunar infrastructure uh pieces.
Heat. Heat.
UCF was founded in 1963 with a clear purpose to prepare the talent, research, and innovations required to land humans on the moon. From the beginning, UCF has been a startup with a mission. This has always been an institution fueled by people with a sense of urgency. People who dare to imagine and are driven to create the future. Here at UCF, our motto has long been reach for the stars.
It is more than symbolic. It represents a future where explorers don't just look at the stars, they work among them.
Together, our leadership, ideas, and vision will accelerate discovery and chart a new trajectory. The breakthroughs imagined here can define the next century of space exploration.
Just 35 miles east of where we are right now, we took our first steps towards landing a man on the moon. Now with talent and minds gathered at space view, we are preparing for the next giant leap.
I won't be enough.
H a hoop h.
Hop on me.
Hop.
We're building rovers. We're building lunar systems. We're building construction systems with the intent of having rovers we can use on the moon.
Build on the moon, build out of materials we've got on the moon so that we don't have to ship all of the materials up there. For the larger scale projects, I'm working with Capstone and senior design projects with Florida Space Grant. And all the software is written, the hardware is designed, the systems are put together, and they're assembled. They're all done by the students. Capstone and senior design teams do the actual work. They design and build. They collaborate across the teams. Everything is student design. On the education side, it's what can we do to fill in gaps that students are missing. Uh there's a lot of stuff that happened and is really kind of a recent development where things don't break.
Kids don't have the idea, the concept of taking something apart. They're not things they can go take apart. So there's assembly, working, building stuff, putting stuff together. We found that people my side of 40 have done a lot of that. People the other side of 40 from where I am have not. So, we've got projects for folks to go put stuff together like that. We started out trying to take rovers like what's behind me and use those with undergraduates, uh, freshmen. Their schedule was full.
We started looking at high schools and ran out to a teacher that said, "My elementary school kids can go build this." So, she is a fifth grade STEM teacher. We have fifth grade classes building these robots. The purple one back here was built by the fifth grade STEM class. It works as well as the other ones.
uh the teachers created the lesson plan or we provide them with drawings. We don't provide them with uh detailed instructions or a video or anything.
They've got to figure it out from the drawings. And so fifth graders are figuring out transmissions, gearboxes, building the electronics, putting everything together. And it's the first time they've done anything like that.
And they're absolutely awesome at it.
>> So I do a lot of the mechanical design uh that happens with these robots. And now most of the design came to us by uh other people who are also working on these. that sometimes a little change needs to be made or a part needs to be updated and that usually falls onto me.
I always enjoy working with students.
They're every time smarter than you think they are. Um, and really catch on really well and easily and they love figuring stuff out. Um, generally speaking, it's a great time and they're all really smart and fun to work with.
All the software stuff is pretty much provided for them. This project hopefully elementary school students, but other grade school students starting to do a little bit of software editing and changing for learning. Uh, but for the elementary school students that are doing it now, they're all doing assembly.
>> So, with the software, there is an interface that the user has to interact with. Whether that can be a phone app, that can be a desktop app, uh or it could be any kind of application. You need to be able to have some kind of system where you can say, "I want to move forward. I want to move backwards.
I want to go left, right, or I want to speed up or I want to slow down." This has been worked on by a lot of different teams. So, it's been passed around a lot and then there's a lot of work that's been built up over the years and stuff.
So, if you're building everything from scratch, it would take you a long time.
But, uh what we do is like split task up into man manageable sizes. So each week we have something to do.
>> You get to see some of the groups of kids split up and work together on this project that if you were doing by yourself like me, it might take you a while, but for them, they're enjoying every step of the way. And they're doing it much, much faster than at least I could by myself.
>> It's really fun. It's really rewarding.
Um cuz you can see all the kids in and their mind working and watching them build and maybe some of them aren't interested at the start but by the end they've kind of gotten like involved as they see the the robot, you know, becoming becoming a real robot and actually able to move around. So, it's really is really rewarding >> being able to work with these robots that not only are setting up future engineers to develop stuff to work on the moon and setting them up for their future. Um, but it's also directly developing technologies that will be useful on the moon.
>> Watching them learn is very very it's it's it's just from my point of view, it's absolutely fantastic to go watch.
There's a problem to go solve. They sit down, they go solve the problem, they work through the problem. You'll see we give them an exploded view, an old style, just an expanded view of what the parts go like. And they'll be up there bringing the parts up, holding them up against the picture on the wall and putting things together that way.
They're mentored in how to use the tools installed by the students that we've got here. But the students, the elementary school kids are doing the work themselves, putting things together.
Okay.
Each year, the search for minerals leads miners deeper into uninviting lands far from civilization, where not only strength, but ingenuity is required to pull ore from the earth. With groundbreaking advances in technology, Caterpillar is helping its customers overcome that challenge and changing the future of mining.
>> It was a complex environment. Nobody had done this before.
I got told on a daily basis, we can't do this with big hall trucks. It's not going to work.
>> Good mining is about the consistency that happens shift after shift, day after day, hour after hour. customers have million-dollar assets that are not being utilized and that's costing them money.
>> Improve productivity, improve safety, >> show people that it would really work in a real mining environment.
>> We're actually making this happen. This is completely different than anything we've ever done before.
>> We have the world believing that this is this is the technology for the future.
Um, I became aware of Caterpillar at the NASA robotic mining competition. NASA has a goal to colonize the moon and Mars. Um, so to facilitate a lot of those activities, you've got to be able to excavate the material. So, as a way to crowdsource some of the the ideas for how to build those excavators, uh, NASA's created this uh, robotic mining competition that Caterpillar is a big part of. Every single year we build this basically a robotic excavator much like some of this stuff. I mean we built a front end loader similar to that one year. Um and pretty much have like I think they give you like 10 minutes and you go up and down the track and and you mine and you bring it back and and uh they score you. So autonomy is the big part of the competition now. Uh in the past years it's all it's been all about you know being able to move in the material. The material is something very difficult to work in. Um, but as as teams have evolved, the competition has evolved and and autonomy is a is a key part of that now. Um, and I think that's really one thing that sets our school apart. That's why we do so well. Um, we have an edge on on that autonomy perspective. So, I think that's kind of what CAT's interested in us. Honestly, robotics is a new way to solve problems.
So, there there's there's infinite possibilities to solve those problems.
Um, and and you have a chance to make the world a better place. Honestly, um, you're developing technologies that make everyone's life easier. You're automating tasks. um you're just making a better quality of life for everyone. I I I normally associated CAT with just this big large um construction type company and it's it's really more of a tech company. Now getting to be inside and seeing all the all the innovative things that CAT does is is I I don't think people really appreciate all the technology that goes into CAT equipment.
Kind of expected it to be a little bit of intimidating honestly, you know, CAT engineers, you know, but but it's it's a it's a really fun work environment. I love coming to work every day. Honestly, Caterpillar has a lot of opportunities to to succeed. Um, one of the things that's really stuck out to me that I've learned uh during my time as an intern.
Um, just all the opportunities within the company. Um, I'm I'm the kind of guy that likes to jump around. Um, I it's become apparent to me that within Caterpillar, if you want to have an entire career at Caterpillar, you have an opportunity to do all those different things and still stay within the company. You you don't necessarily have to leave and hop jobs and things like that. All those opportunities are pro provided to you within the company.
I would absolutely recommend the Caterpillar intern program to my peers.
It has been a it has been a a great learning experience that I'm very thankful for.
What does it take to keep your site running 24/7? Most mines today run off of human decision-m and it is possible to run an operation effectively and efficiently with experienced people and limited technology.
Employees are trained to run and maintain equipment to achieve your site's goals. Experienced operators monitor and plan ahead down to the cycle for when it's time to fill up their fuel tanks. Maintenance crews know how to proactively plan for downtime to perform required work or address service needs.
Today, your mining operations are focused on driving more efficiency, achieving targeted production levels, managing the safety and well-being of your people, all while meeting market demands for the commodities you produce.
But now, the energy transition is here, and your company is making commitments to a more sustainable future. Seasoned personnel are being asked to accomplish their same tasks and achieve their same KPIs using electric equipment they've never before experienced. In an electrified landscape, everything on site becomes more interdependent. Today, your team is refueling machines every 12 to 24 hours. Tomorrow, you'll be monitoring energy management down to the minute, determining the ideal time to recharge each machine. To be successful, the mindset of the future must operate as an integrated and well orchestrated system. More than ever before, you need a solution that's capable of holistically managing and optimizing your operations and able to instantly adapt to changes. Fuel stations must be replaced with battery chargers and dynamic energy transfer solutions capable of delivering energy to your equipment without interrupting production. From using energy to travel to the truck's assigned load zone, navigating through the mines and charging your machines as they travel uphill, watching the battery drain and refill in real time, dumping stationary charger for a quick charge versus sitting in a queue at the shovel.
This is the smart mindsite of the future. A cohesive site management system that can be customized to meet your needs. Together with you, we can develop an integrated system that will help propel your operations into the future.
One that includes fleet management, autonomy, energy transfer, and energy storage solutions. At Caterpillar, we are ready for the challenges and opportunities of the energy transition.
And we are ready to work together with you to build a better, more sustainable world.
Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat.
This competition for NASA is part of their Centennial Challenge program. What we're going to see this week is two teams who have made it to the final step be able to actually print a 1/3 scale habitat and may ultimately be used on the surface of Mars. The kind of materials they have selected to build this habitat are materials that will represent what could be found on the surface of the moon or on the surface of Mars. Perhaps >> it's really a form of incentivized R&D where uh NASA provides prize money to pursue innovation that meets again NASA's mission objectives of space exploration but also can provide real value for for here terrestrially. Great example is um the work we did with NASA uh at Johnson Space Center where we worked on remote control and creating an operator center so he can drive a machine could be many miles away and that operator center actually move forward and we you can see it today in Caterpillar's command for dozing product for example. So certainly this technology that we're looking at this week has that opportunity of being a very disruptive transformational technology for even the construction industry um here on Earth.
>> NASA was interested in working with Caterpillar because they have experience of course in construction and if you want to build habitat we go to the experts right so we are reaching out to the people that have done this for years and years to help us make sure that what we're doing makes sense. I think this competition, you know, is a public example of what we do here at Caterpillar every day. There may be a public image of Caterpillar of and we certainly are a manufacturer of heavy equipment, but really we are a technology company and we provide that technology through large equipment like you see behind me here. We provide that technology through large equipment and services that we provide. I believe that's who Caterpillar really is.
It starts with a spark.
A spark that inspires possibilities.
A spark that ignites progress. For a century, Caterpillar has been that spark, powering progress across roads, cities, industries, and economies.
Together, we've built the foundation of the modern world. But as the world accelerates at an exponential pace, our customers face new challenges every day.
Understanding their needs fuels our purpose. We build a better, more sustainable world. To do that, we must listen, develop, and deliver tailored products and services that drive real outcomes. And those outcomes are just the beginning. Because sparking transformation means more than building equipment.
It's getting closer to our customers without losing focus on creating quality products. It's leading the industry with differentiated digital and technology solutions and embracing new ways of working to accelerate innovation.
Ultimately, it's about solving our customers toughest challenges because the future demands it. We've honored our first h 100red years and the strength of the legacy that propels us forward. This is our moment with technology at the forefront, customers at the center, and our people leading the way. The future belongs to us. Tomorrow takes courage.
Tomorrow takes commitment and a spark to ignite it. Tomorrow takes Caterpillar.
Unstoppable.
That's one small step for man, one time for mankind.
>> No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long range exploration of space. and liftoff of Artemis 1. We rise together back to the moon and beyond.
>> Now it is time to take longest strides.
Time for a great new American enterprise.
Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.
This is a research flight um suborbital by Blue Origin. So they fly their New Shepard rocket that they fly, you know, the suborbital astronauts on. Um, and every once in a while they still fly research flights. And so we, um, through a NASA program, the NASA flight option program, um, we obtained a spot on this research flight to put our payload. And the payload um basically levitates a cloud of dust and is able to keep it in place without ever touching it for a long time. So in this flight specifically, we are demonstrating the technology and our hope would be in the future um to run astrophysical experiments um to measure the interaction of um light with clouds of dust that are homogeneous. Um and you know that would inform a lot of for example the JWST um data that is coming in because in the IR in the infrared specifically um large grains of dust interact with light um and so that's what we're looking at.
We're creating an artificial cloud of dust and you know this is a technology in itself. So that's a technology we're testing on the flight. We have to run this under microgravity conditions.
Otherwise, the dust would sort itself by weight. It would basic gravity. But once you're in microgravity, you get a chance to actually levitate a homogeneous cloud of dust. It has several applications if you are able to levitate clouds of dust. So there's applications for atmospheric research, astrophysics research and the one I haven't mentioned yet is also planetary research for example in rings um you have these type of environments where you have several particles interacting homogeneously um but also formation early stages of planet formation um when the star forms and around the star there's still the gas and dust that's where the planets will form later and in these early stages, it's really just clouds of dust interacting and the dust colliding, growing. I'm interested in using this technology for research down the line.
So, this technology was developed as part of, you know, the scientific community understanding, okay, we need an undisturbed clouds of dust so that we can do this research to understand how the dust behaves when it's un you know, really untouched. Um, so I, you know, I'm excited to down the line use this technology for actual research. And then number two, I think it's very exciting also to see the students have the opportunity to work on actual hardware and the solutions they come up with. Um, and just the contribution that they make um, and the contribution that the project makes to their education.
Um, I think that's a great motivation as well.
Come on up.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat.
I study asteroids and comets and uh mostly asteroids that could threaten Earth with an impact, but at the same time could also be used for mining, for space mining because they come really close to the Earth and they have very little gravity. So, not only are they a potential threat to Earth, which we are addressing, but they are also a potential resource. Water is the most precious material outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Once you can uh extract it from the surfaces of asteroids and then deliver it to the Earth's orbit cheaper than it costs to launch, then you're going to have a self-sustaining space economy where the water will be produced, you know, from the asteroids, broken up into hydrogen and oxygen, used as fuel by all these satellites, and then you would not have to put it into orbit. Putting things into orbit is very expensive. Mining asteroids is very expensive. But once you uh improve the technology so that the mining is cheaper than putting things into orbit, boy, you're going to open up all kinds of stuff. Right now, there is no asteroid asteroid large enough to uh wipe out civilization that is threatening us. So, but as a civilization, we must worry about because large impacts have happened and will happen again unless we avoid them and unless we change the the course of the threatening asteroid. But those are also the ones that we have studied in most detail and those are not threatening us right now. Um along those lines, the NASA NASA's DART mission was designed to deflect an asteroid from its course with an impact. And it was a uh an experiment to try to determine if this technique would help would work. It was a spectacular success. It worked extremely well. The impact of of the NASA spacecraft onto this small asteroid that was orbiting a bigger one changed its orbit a lot more than we had anticipated. And so this technique is much more promising than we thought it was and it is our number one technique to deflect asteroids that would threaten Earth. I became very interested in comets and maybe because when I was 10 years old, comedic came and it was so spectacular. My father woke my brother and I up and we went out and this spectacular comet that went from the horizon to the cenis. Um, and so since I was a child, I've been interested in astronomy specifically in comets. I started started studying comets. My PhD thesis was on that. And then there were these strange objects that were kind of like comets but and they had the orbits of comets and I found asteroids very interesting. So I shifted more into asteroids. Although I haven't left comets completely, I am part of a proposal that is being led by Cornell University to build the uh spacecraft to go to the nucleus of a comet, not an asteroid, and bring back a sample of it.
Boy, did it feel good to hire do my first two hires which were uh Dan Brit, Professor Brit, and Professor Fernandez.
So, we have grown fast. Um we are um we're very proud of the fact that two of our um kind of junior faculty members uh have gotten the largest NASA grant or NASA contract that UCF has ever gotten for $35 million to build a rover that would study a volcanic area on the moon.
It's called Lunar Vice. And that's Professor Donald and Hannah and Professor Adrien Dove. So, uh, I'm just like, "Wow, I I cannot claim any credit for how good these people are, except that I did hire them."
So, I've been at the right place at the right time, and it's been very rewarding. I'm just uh really grateful because uh UCF has been um the best decision of my career. uh accepting the job at UCF. It it kind of looked good at the time, but boy, I had no idea that it was going to be this good. So, I I am grateful for UCF for giving me uh a home to develop this group and uh that I'm so proud of.
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So in this paper uh we actually looked at the first orbital test flight launch of the Starship rocket. That's SpaceX's new prototype rocket. That rocket is actually part of NASA's Aremis program to take us back to the moon. I think folks are probably familiar that launch actually didn't use like a water deluge or water suppression system on the launchpad. And so there was a pretty sizable failure of that launch pad.
Basically left a huge crater. And so our research was going in and figuring out what exactly happened there and doing the forensics on what is the failure mechanism and what does that tell us about when we land a vehicle that size on the moon. So this new class of landers that we're using as we go back to the moon are significantly larger than what we saw during the you know 1960s and '7s during the Apollo program.
And so with that comes higher levels of thrust, you know, bigger engines, bigger vehicles, which, you know, unfortunately kicks up more and more dust when you land on the surface. And and so a lot of my research is studying how can we better understand the equations that govern how much uh dust is kicked up and where does that dust go and and what does it do to equipment when it impinges on it. So, um, this Starship launch in particular was just kind of a unique data set where you have a brand new launch vehicle from a private company designed to take astronauts to and from the lunar surface. So, we're able to use that launch and what the aftermath of that launch to help inform those equations and models. So, there's a a lot of work going on. A lot of folks around the country are studying this problem of how do you land and launch a rocket from a a dusty lowgravity vacuum environment of the moon. I think this research in particular uh it does sort of give us some insights into those models of what we can expect for exhaust velocities and level of thrust. Um, but I I think particularly as we look at building uh like landing our launch pads on the moon, if we start to build a base, this launch kind of shows us the importance of having maybe breathable launch pads, which was more or less the the failure mechanism that we saw here on Earth uh where you end up with a huge pressure buildup underneath uh a concrete launch pad. that kind of helps inform the designs that we're going to use eventually on the moon uh once we start to build those more permanent lunar infrastructure uh pieces.
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UCF was founded in 1963 with a clear purpose to prepare the talent, research, and innovations required to land humans on the moon. From the beginning, UCF has been a startup with a mission. This has always been an institution fueled by people with a sense of urgency. People who dare to imagine and are driven to create the future. Here at UCF, our motto has long been reach for the stars.
It is more than symbolic. It represents a future where explorers don't just look at the stars, they work among them.
Together, our leadership, ideas, and vision will accelerate discovery and chart a new trajectory. The breakthroughs imagined here can define the next century of space exploration.
Just 35 miles east of where we are right now, we took our first steps towards landing a man on the moon. Now, with talent and minds gathered at Space View, we are preparing for the next giant leap.
I won't give up.
Don't be.
H.
Woo. Hop.
We're building rovers. We're building lunar systems. We're building construction systems with the intent of having rovers we can use on the moon, build on the moon, build out of materials we've got on the moon so that we don't have to ship all of the materials up there. for the larger scale projects. I'm working with Capstone and senior design projects with Florida Space Grant and all the software is written, the hardware is designed, the systems are put together and they're assembled. They're all done by the students. Capstone and senior design teams do the actual work because they design and build. They collaborate across the teams. Everything is student design. On the education side, it's what can we do to fill in gaps that students are missing. Uh there's a lot of stuff that happened and is really kind of a recent development where things don't break. Kids don't have the idea, the concept of taking something apart. They don't have things they can go take apart. So there's assembly, working, building stuff, putting stuff together.
We found that people my side of 40 have done a lot of that. People the other side of 40 from where I am have not. So we've got projects for folks to go put stuff together like that. We started out trying to take rovers like what's behind me and use those with undergraduates, uh, freshmen. Their schedule was full.
We started looking at high schools and ran into a teacher that said, "My elementary school kids can go build this." So, she is a fifth grade STEM teacher. We have fifth grade classes building these robots. The purple one back here was built by the fifth grade STEM class. It works as well as the other ones. It's uh the teachers created the lesson plan or we provide them with drawings. We don't provide them with uh detailed instructions or a video or anything. They've got to figure it out from the drawings. And so fifth graders are figuring out transmissions, gearboxes, building the electronics, putting everything together. And it's the first time they've done anything like that. And they're absolutely awesome at it.
>> So I do a lot of the mechanical design uh that happens with these robots. And now most of the design came to us by uh other people who are also working on these. But sometimes a little change needs to be made or a part needs to be updated. and that usually falls onto me.
I always enjoy working with students.
They're every time smarter than you think they are. Um, and really catch on really well and easily and they love figuring stuff out. Um, generally speaking, it's a great time and they're all really smart and fun to work with.
All the software stuff is pretty much provided for them. this project hopefully will get to a point where we can have maybe not elementary school students but other grade school students starting to do a little bit of software editing and changing for learning. Uh but for the elementary school students that are doing it now they're all doing assembly.
>> So with the software there is an interface that the user has to interact with whether that can be a phone app that can be a desktop app uh or it could be any kind of application you need to be able to have some kind of system where you can say I want to move forward. I want to move backwards. I want to go left, right, or I want to speed up or I want to slow down. This has been worked on by a lot of different teams. So, it's been passed around a lot and then there's a lot of work that's been built up over the years and stuff.
So, if you're building everything from scratch, it would take you a long time.
But, uh, what we do is like split task up into man manageable sizes. So, each week you have something to do. You get to see some of the groups of kids split up and work together on this project that if you were doing by yourself like me, it might take you a while, but for them, they're enjoying every step of the way and they're doing it much much faster than at least I could by myself.
>> It's really fun. It's really rewarding.
Um cuz you can see all the kids in in their mind working and watching them build. And maybe some of them aren't interested at the start, but by the end they've kind of gotten like involved as they see the the robot, you know, becoming becoming a real robot and actually able to move around. So, it's really it's really rewarding >> being able to work with these robots that not only are setting up future engineers to develop stuff to work on the moon and setting them up for their future. Um, but it's also directly developing technologies that will be useful on the moon. Watching them learn is very very it's it's it's just from my point of view it's absolutely fantastic to go watch there's a problem to go solve. They sit down. They go solve the problem. They work through the problem.
You'll see we give them an exploded view or an old style just an expanded view of what the parts go like and they'll be up there bringing the parts up, holding them up against the picture on the wall and putting things together. That way they're mentored in how to use the tools installed by the students that we've got here. But the students of the elementary school kids are doing the work themselves. Putting things together.
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Each year, the search for minerals leads miners deeper into uninviting lands far from civilization. We're not only strength, but ingenuity is required to pull ore from the earth. With groundbreaking advances in technology, Caterpillar is helping its customers overcome that challenge and changing the future of mining.
>> It was a complex environment. Nobody done this before.
>> I got told on a daily basis, we can't do this with big hall trucks. It's not going to work.
Good mining is about the consistency that happens shift after shift, day after day, hour after hour.
>> Customers have million-dollar assets that are not being utilized, and that's costing them money.
>> Improve productivity, improve safety, >> show people that it would really work in a real mining environment.
>> We're actually making this happen. This is completely different than anything we've ever done before.
>> We have the world believing that this is this is the technology for the future.
Um I became aware of Caterpillar at the NASA robotic mining competition. NASA has a goal to colonize the moon and Mars. Um so to facilitate a lot of those activities, you've got to be able to excavate the material. So, it was a way to crowdsource some of the the ideas for how to build those excavators. Uh NASA's created this uh robotic mining competition that Caterpillar is a big part of. Every single year, we build this basically robotic excavator much like some of this stuff. I mean, we built a front end loader similar to that one year. Um and pretty much have like I think they give you like 10 minutes and you go up and down the track and and you mine and you bring it back and and uh they score you. So, autonomy is the big part of the competition now. uh in the past years it's all it's been all about you know being able to move in the material the material is something very difficult to work in um but as as teams have evolved the competition has evolved and and autonomy is a is a key part of that now um and I think that's really one thing that sets our school apart that's why we do so well um we have an edge on on that autonomy perspective so I think that's kind of what CAT's interested in us honestly robotics is a new way to solve problems so there there's there's infinite possibilities to solve those problems um and and you have a chance to make the world a better place. Honestly, um you're developing technologies that make everyone's life easier. You're automating task. You're just making a better quality of life for everyone. I I I normally associated CAT with just this big large um construction type company and it's it's really more of a tech company. Now, getting to be inside and seeing all the all the innovative things that CAT does is is I I don't think people really appreciate all the technology that goes into CAT equipment. kind of expected it to be a little bit of intimidating honestly, you know, CAT engineers, you know, but but it's it's a it's a really fun work environment. I love coming to work every day. Honestly, Caterpillar has a lot of opportunities to to succeed. Um, one of the things that's really stuck out to me that I've learned uh during my time as an intern, um, just all the opportunities within the company. Um, I'm I'm the kind of guy that likes to jump around. Um I it's become apparent to me that within Caterpillar, if you want to have an entire career at Caterpillar, you have an opportunity to do all those different things and still stay within the company. You you don't necessarily have to leave and hop jobs and things like that. All those opportunities provided to you within the company. I would absolutely recommend the Caterpillar intern program to my peers. It has been a it has been a a great learning experience that I'm very thankful for.
What does it take to keep your site running 24/7? Most mines today run off of human decision-m and it is possible to run an operation effectively and efficiently with experienced people and limited technology.
Employees are trained to run and maintain equipment to achieve your site's goals. Experienced operators monitor and plan ahead down to the cycle for when it's time to fill up their fuel tanks. Maintenance crews know how to proactively plan for downtime, to perform required work, or address service needs. Today, your mining operations are focused on driving more efficiency, achieving targeted production levels, managing the safety and well-being of your people, all while meeting market demands for the commodities you produce. But now the energy transition is here and your company is making commitments to a more sustainable future. Seasoned personnel are being asked to accomplish their same tasks and achieve their same KPIs using electric equipment they've never before experienced. In an electrified landscape, everything on site becomes more interdependent. Today, your team is refueling machines every 12 to 24 hours.
Tomorrow, you'll be monitoring energy management down to the minutes, determining the ideal time to recharge each machine. To be successful, the mindset of the future must operate as an integrated and well orchestrated system more than ever before. You need a solution that's capable of holistically managing and optimizing your operations and able to instantly adapt to changes.
Fuel stations must be replaced with battery chargers and dynamic energy transfer solutions capable of delivering energy to your equipment without interrupting production. From using energy to travel to the truck's assigned load zone, navigating through the mine, and charging your machines as they travel uphill, watching the battery drain and refill in real time, dumping a load, and then making a stop at a stationary charger for a quick charge versus sitting in a queue at the shovel.
This is the smart mindsite of the future. A cohesive site management system that can be customized to meet your needs. Together with you, we can develop an integrated system that will help propel your operations into the future.
One that includes fleet management, autonomy, energy transfer, and energy storage solutions. At Caterpillar, we are ready for the challenges and opportunities of the energy transition.
And we are ready to work together with you to build a better, more sustainable world.
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This competition for NASA is part of their Centennial Challenge program. What we're going to see this week is two teams who have made it to the final step be able to actually print a 1/3 scale habitat and may ultimately be used on the surface of Mars.
>> The kind of materials they have selected to build this habitat are materials that will represent what could be found on the surface of the moon or on the surface of Mars perhaps.
It's really a form of incentivized R&D where uh NASA provides prize money to pursue innovation that meets again NASA's mission objectives of space exploration but also can provide real value for for here terrestrially. Great example is um the work we did with NASA uh at Johnson Space Center where we worked on remote control and creating an operator center so he can drive a machine could be many miles away and that operator center actually move forward and we you can see it today in Caterpillar's command for dozing product for example. So certainly this technology that we're looking at this week has that opportunity of being a very disruptive transformational technology for even the construction industry um here on Earth.
>> NASA was interested in working with Caterpillar because they have experience of course in construction and if you want to build habitat we go to the experts right so we are reaching out to the people that have done this for years and years to help us make sure that what we're doing makes sense. I think this competition, you know, is a public example of what we do here at Caterpillar every day. There may be a public image of Caterpillar of and we certainly are a manufacturer of heavy equipment, but really we are a technology company and we provide that technology through large equipment like you see behind me here. We provide that technology through large equipment and services that we provide. I believe that's who Caterpillar really is.
It starts with a spark.
A spark that inspires possibilities.
A spark that ignites progress. For a century, Caterpillar has been that spark, powering progress across roads, cities, industries, and economies.
Together, we've built the foundation of the modern world. But as the world accelerates at an exponential pace, our customers face new challenges every day.
Understanding their needs fuels our purpose. We build a better, more sustainable world. To do that, we must listen, develop, and deliver tailored products and services that drive real outcomes. And those outcomes are just the beginning. Because sparking transformation means more than building equipment.
It's getting closer to our customers without losing focus on creating quality products. It's leading the industry with differentiated digital and technology solutions and embracing new ways of working to accelerate innovation.
Ultimately, it's about solving our customers toughest challenges because the future demands it. We've honored our first h 100red years and the strength of the legacy that propels us forward. This is our moment with technology at the forefront, customers at the center, and our people leading the way. The future belongs to us. Tomorrow takes courage.
Tomorrow takes commitment and a spark to ignite it. Tomorrow takes Caterpillar.
Unstoppable.
That's one small step for man, one piece for mankind.
No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long range exploration of space.
>> And liftoff of Artemis 1, we rise together back to the moon and beyond.
>> Now it is time to take longer strides.
Time for a great new American enterprise.
Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.
This is a research flight um suborbital by Blue Origin. So they fly their New Shepard rocket that they fly, you know, the suborbital astronauts on. Um, and every once in a while they still fly research flights. And so we, um, through a NASA program, the NASA flight option program, um, we obtained a spot on this research flight to put our payload. And the payload um basically levitates a cloud of dust and is able to keep it in place without ever touching it for a long time. So in this flight specifically, we are demonstrating the technology and our hope would be in the future um to run astrophysical experiments um to measure the interaction of um light with clouds of dust that are homogeneous. Um and you know that would inform a lot of for example the JWST um data that is coming in because in the IR in the infrared specifically um large grains of dust interact with light um and so that's what we're looking at.
We're creating an artificial cloud of dust and you know this is a technology in itself. So that's a technology we're testing on the flight. We have to run this under microgravity conditions.
Otherwise, the dust would sort itself by weight. It would basically not stay in place because of Earth's gravity. But once you're in microgravity, you get a chance to actually levitate a homogeneous cloud of dust. It has several applications. if you are able to levitate clouds of dust. So there's applications for atmospheric research, astrophysics research and the one I haven't mentioned yet is also planetary research for example in rings. Um you have these type of environments where you have several particles interacting homogeneously.
Um but also formation early stages of planet formation. um when the star forms and around the star there's still the gas and dust that's where the planets will form later and in these early stages it's really just clouds of dust interacting and the dust colliding growing I'm interested in using this technology for research down the line so this technology was developed as part of you know the scientific community understanding okay we need an undisturbed clouds of dust so that we can do this research to understand how the dust behaves when it's un you know really untouched. Um so I you know I'm excited to down the line use this technology for actual research. Uh and then number two, I think it's very exciting also to see the students have the opportunity to work on actual hardware and the solutions they come up with. Um and just the contribution that they make um and the contribution that the project makes to their education. Um I think that's a great motivation as well.
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I study asteroids and comets and uh mostly asteroids that could threaten Earth with an impact but at the same time could also be used for mining for space mining because they come really close to the Earth and they have very little gravity. So, not only are they a potential threat to Earth, which we are addressing, but they are also a potential resource. Water is the most precious material outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Once you can uh extract it from the surfaces of asteroids and then deliver it to the Earth's orbit cheaper than it costs to launch, then you're going to have a self-sustaining space economy where the water will be produced, you know, from the asteroids, broken up into hydrogen and oxygen, used as fuel by all these satellites, and then you would not have to put it into orbit. Putting things into orbit is very expensive. Mining asteroids is very expensive. But once you uh improve the technology so that the mining is cheaper than putting things into orbit, boy, you're going to open up all kinds of stuff. Right now, there is no asteroid asteroid large enough to uh wipe out civilization that is threatening us. So, but as a civilization, we must worry about because large impacts have happened and will happen again unless we avoid them and unless we change the the course of the threatening asteroid. But those are also the ones that we have studied in most detail and those are not threatening us right now. Um along those lines, the NASA NASA's dart mission was designed to deflect an asteroid from its course with an impact. And it was a uh an experiment to try to determine if this technique would help would work. It was a spectacular success. It worked extremely well. The impact of of the NASA spacecraft onto this small asteroid that was orbiting a bigger one changed its orbit a lot more than we had anticipated. And so this technique is much more promising than we thought it was. And it is our number one technique to deflect asteroids that would threaten Earth. I became very interested in comets and maybe because when I was 10 years old, comedic came and it was so spectacular. My father woke my brother and I up and we went out and this spectacular comet that went from the horizon to the cenis. Um, and so since I was a child, I've been interested in astronomy specifically in comets. I started started studying comets. My PhD thesis was on that. And then there were these strange objects that were kind of like comets but and they had the orbits of comets and I found asteroids very interesting. So I shifted more into asteroids. Although I haven't left comets completely, I am part of a proposal that is being led by Cornell University to build the uh spacecraft to go to the nucleus of a comet, not an asteroid, and bring back a sample of it.
Boy, did it feel good to hire do my first two hires, which were uh Dan Brit, Professor Brit, and Professor Fernandez.
So, we have grown fast. Um we are um we're very proud of the fact that two of our um kind of junior faculty members uh have gotten the largest NASA grant or NASA contract that UCF has ever gotten for $35 million to build a rover that would study a volcanic area on the moon.
It's called Lunar Vice. And that's Professor Donald and Hannah and Professor Adrien Dove. So, uh, I'm just like, wow. I I cannot claim any credit for how good these people are, except that I did hire them.
So, I've been at the right place at the right time, and it's been very rewarding. I'm just uh really grateful because uh UCF has been um the best decision of my career. uh accepting the job at UCF. It it kind of looked good at the time, but boy, I had no idea that it was going to be this good. So, I I am grateful for UCF for giving me uh a home to develop this group and uh that I'm so proud of.
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Hey, hey, hey.
So in this paper uh we actually looked at the first orbital test flight launch of the uh Starship rocket. That's SpaceX's new prototype rocket. That rocket is actually part of NASA's Aremis program to take us back to the moon. I think folks are probably familiar that launch actually didn't use like a water deluge or water suppression system on the launchpad. And so there was a pretty sizable failure of that launch pad.
Basically left a huge crater. And so our research was going in and figuring out what exactly happened there and doing the forensics on what is the failure mechanism and what does that tell us about when we land a vehicle that size on the moon. So this new class of landers that we're using as we go back to the moon are significantly larger than what we saw during the you know 1960s and '7s during the Apollo program.
And so with that comes higher levels of thrust, you know, bigger engines, bigger vehicles, which, you know, unfortunately kicks up more and more dust when you land on the surface. And and so a lot of my research is studying how can we better understand the equations that govern how much uh dust is kicked up and where does that dust go and and what does it do to equipment when it impinges on it. So, um, this Starship launch in particular was just kind of a unique data set where you have a brand new launch vehicle from a private company designed to take astronauts to and from the lunar surface. So, we're able to use that launch and what the aftermath of that launch to help inform those equations and models. So, there's a a lot of work going on. A lot of folks around the country are studying this problem of how do you land and launch a rocket from a a dusty lowgravity vacuum environment of the moon. I think this research in particular uh it does sort of give us some insights into those models of what we can expect for exhaust velocities and level of thrust. Um, but I I think particularly as we look at building uh like landing our launch pads on the moon, if we start to build a base, this launch kind of shows us the importance of having maybe breathable launch pads, which was more or less the the failure mechanism that we saw here on Earth uh where you end up with a huge pressure buildup underneath uh a concrete launch pad. that kind of helps inform the designs that we're going to use eventually on the moon uh once we start to build those more permanent lunar infrastructure uh pieces.
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UCF was founded in 1963 with a clear purpose to prepare the talent, research, and innovations required to land humans on the moon. From the beginning, UCF has been a startup with a mission. This has always been an institution fueled by people with a sense of urgency. People who dare to imagine and are driven to create the future. Here at UCF, our motto has long been reach for the stars.
It is more than symbolic. It represents a future where explorers don't just look at the stars, they work among them.
Together, our leadership, ideas, and vision will accelerate discovery and chart a new trajectory. The breakthroughs imagined here can define the next century of space exploration.
Just 35 miles east of where we are right now, we took our first steps towards landing a man on the moon. Now with talent and minds gathered at space view, we are preparing for the next giant leap.
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Hold me up.
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Hop on behind.
We're building rovers. We're building lunar systems. We're building construction systems with the intent of having rovers we can use on the moon.
Build on the moon, build out of materials we've got on the moon so that we don't have to ship all of the materials up there. For the larger scale projects, I'm working with Capstone and senior design projects with Florida Space Grant. And all the software is written, the hardware is designed, the systems are put together, and they're assembled. They're all done by the students. Capstone and senior design teams do the actual work. Go to design and build. They collaborate across the teams. Everything is student design. On the education side, it's what can we do to fill in gaps that students are missing. Uh there's a lot of stuff that happened and is really kind of a recent development where things don't break.
Kids don't have the idea, the concept of taking something apart. They don't have things they can go take apart. So there's assembly, working, building stuff, putting stuff together. We found that people my side of 40 have done a lot of that. People the other side of 40 from where I am have not. So, we've got projects for folks to go put stuff together like that. We started out trying to take rovers like what's behind me and use those with undergraduates, uh, freshmen. Their schedule was full.
We started looking at high schools and ran out to a teacher that said, "My elementary school kids can go build this." So, she is a fifth grade STEM teacher. We have fifth grade classes building these robots. The purple one back here was built by the fifth grade STEM class. It works as well as the other ones. uh the teachers created the lesson plan or we provide them with drawings. We don't provide them with uh detailed instructions or a video or anything. They've got to figure it out from the drawings. And so fifth graders are figuring out transmissions, gearboxes, building the electronics, putting everything together. And it's the first time they've done anything like that. And they're absolutely awesome at it.
>> So I do a lot of the mechanical design uh that happens with these robots. And now most of the design came to us by uh other people who are also working on these. that sometimes a little change needs to be made or a part needs to be updated and that usually falls onto me.
I always enjoy working with students.
They're every time smarter than you think they are. Um, and really catch on really well and easily and they love figuring stuff out. Um, generally speaking, it's a great time and they're all really smart and fun to work with.
All the software stuff is pretty much provided for them. this project hopefully will get to a point where we can have maybe not elementary school students but other grade school students starting to do a little bit of software editing and changing for learning. Uh but for the elementary school students that are doing it now they're all doing assembly. So with the software there is an interface that the user has to interact with whether that can be a phone app that can be a desktop app uh or it could be any kind of application you need to be able to have some kind of system where you can say I want to move forward I want to move backwards I want to go left right or I want to speed up or I want to slow down. This has been worked on by a lot of different teams so it's been passed around a lot and then there's a lot of work that's been built up over the years and stuff. So if you were building everything from scratch, it would take you a long time. But uh what we do is like split task up into man manageable sizes. So each week you have something to do. You get to see some of the groups of kids split up and work together on this project that if you were doing by yourself like me, it might take you a while, but for them, they're enjoying every step of the way and they're doing it much much faster than at least I could by myself.
>> It's really fun. It's really rewarding um because you can see all the kids and and their mind working and watching them build and maybe some of them aren't interested at the start but by the end they've kind of gotten like involved as they see the the robot, you know, becoming becoming a real robot and actually able to move around. And so it's really it's really rewarding >> being able to work with these robots that not only are setting up future engineers to develop stuff to work on the moon and setting them up for their future. Um but it's also directly developing technologies that will be useful on the moon.
>> Watching them learn is very very it's it's it's just from my point of view it's absolutely fantastic to go watch.
There's a problem to go solve. They sit down they go solve the problem. They work through the problem. You'll see we give them an exploded view or an old style, just an expanded view of what the parts go like and they'll be up there bringing the parts up, holding them up against the picture on the wall and putting things together that way.
They're mentored in how to use the tools installed by the students that we've got here. But the students of the elementary school kids are doing the work themselves, put things together.
Each year, the search for minerals leads miners deeper into uninviting lands far from civilization, where not only strength, but ingenuity is required to pull ore from the earth. With groundbreaking advances in technology, Caterpillar is helping its customers overcome that challenge and changing the future of mining.
>> It was a complex environment. Nobody had done this before.
I got told on a daily basis, we can't do this with big hall trucks. It's not going to work.
>> Good mining is about the consistency that happens shift after shift, day after day, hour after hour. customers have million-dollar assets that are not being utilized and that's costing them money.
>> Improve productivity, improve safety, >> show people that it would really work in a real mining environment.
>> We're actually making this happen. This is completely different than anything we've ever done before.
>> We have the world believing that this is this is the technology for the future.
Um, I became aware of Caterpillar at the NASA robotic mining competition. NASA has a goal to colonize the moon and Mars. Um, so to facilitate a lot of those activities, you've got to be able to excavate the material. So, as a way to crowdsource some of the the ideas for how to build those excavators, NASA's created this uh robotic mining competition that Caterpillar is a big part of. Every single year we build this basically a robotic excavator much like some of this stuff. I mean we built a front end loader similar to that one year. Um and pretty much have like I think they give you like 10 minutes and you go up and down the track and and you mine and you bring it back and and uh they score you. So autonomy is the big part of the competition now. Uh in the past years it's all it's been all about you know being able to move in the material. The material is something very difficult to work in. Um, but as as teams have evolved, the competition has evolved and and autonomy is a is a key part of that now. Um, and I think that's really one thing that sets our school apart. That's why we do so well. Um, we have an edge on on that autonomy perspective. So, I think that's kind of what CAT's interested in us. Honestly, robotics is a new way to solve problems.
So, there there's there's infinite possibilities to solve those problems.
Um, and and you have a chance to make the world a better place. Honestly, um, you're developing technologies that make everyone's life easier. You're automating tasks. um you're just making a better quality of life for everyone. I I I normally associated CAT with just this big large um construction type company and it's it's really more of a tech company. Now getting to be inside and seeing all the all the innovative things that CAT does is is I I don't think people really appreciate all the technology that goes into CAT equipment.
Kind of expected it to be a little bit of intimidating honestly, you know, CAT engineers, you know, but but it's it's a it's a really fun work environment. I love coming to work every day. Honestly, Caterpillar has a lot of opportunities to to succeed. Um, one of the things that's really stuck out to me that I've learned uh during my time as an intern.
Um, just all the opportunities within the company. Um, I'm I'm the kind of guy that likes to jump around. Um, I it's become apparent to me that in within Caterpillar, if you want to have an entire career at Caterpillar, you have an opportunity to do all those different things and still stay within the company. You you don't necessarily have to leave and hop jobs and things like that. All those opportunities are pro provided to you within the company.
I would absolutely recommend the Caterpillar intern program to my peers.
It has been a it has been a a great learning experience that I'm very thankful for.
What does it take to keep your site running 24/7? Most mines today run off of human decision-m and it is possible to run an operation effectively and efficiently with experienced people and limited technology.
Employees are trained to run and maintain equipment to achieve your site's goals. Experienced operators monitor and plan ahead down to the cycle for when it's time to fill up their fuel tanks. Maintenance crews know how to proactively plan for downtime to perform required work or address service needs.
Today, your mining operations are focused on driving more efficiency, achieving targeted production levels, managing the safety and well-being of your people, all while meeting market demands for the commodities you produce.
But now, the energy transition is here, and your company is making commitments to a more sustainable future. Seasoned personnel are being asked to accomplish their same tasks and achieve their same KPIs using electric equipment they've never before experienced. In an electrified landscape, everything on site becomes more interdependent. Today, your team is refueling machines every 12 to 24 hours. Tomorrow, you'll be monitoring energy management down to the minute, determining the ideal time to recharge each machine. To be successful, the mindset of the future must operate as an integrated and well orchestrated system. More than ever before, you need a solution that's capable of holistically managing and optimizing your operations and able to instantly adapt to changes. Fuel stations must be replaced with battery chargers and dynamic energy transfer solutions capable of delivering energy to your equipment without interrupting production. From using energy to travel to the truck's assigned load zone, navigating through the mine, and charging your machines as they travel uphill, watching the battery drain and refill in real time, dumping a load, and then making a stop at a stationary charger for a quick charge versus sitting in a queue at the shovel. This is the smart mindsite of the future. a cohesive site management system that can be customized to meet your needs.
Together with you, we can develop an integrated system that will help propel your operations into the future.
One that includes fleet management, autonomy, energy transfer, and energy storage solutions. At Caterpillar, we are ready for the challenges and opportunities of the energy transition, and we are ready to work together with you to build a better, more sustainable world.
Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat.
This competition for NASA is part of their Centennial Challenge program. What we're going to see this week is two teams who have made it to the final step be able to actually print a 1/3 scale habitat and may ultimately be used on the surface of Mars.
>> The kind of materials they have selected to build this habitat are materials that will represent what could be found on the surface of the moon or on the surface of Mars perhaps.
It's really a form of incentivized R&D where uh NASA provides prize money to pursue innovation that meets again NASA's mission objectives of space exploration but also can provide real value for for here terrestrially. Great example is um the work we did with NASA uh at Johnson Space Center where we worked on remote control and creating an operator center so he can drive a machine could be many miles away and that operator center actually move forward and we you can see it today in Caterpillar's command for dozing product for example. So certainly this technology that we're looking at this week has that opportunity of being a very disruptive transformational technology for even the construction industry um here on Earth.
>> NASA was interested in working with Caterpillar because they have experience of course in construction and if you want to build habitat we go to the experts right so we are reaching out to the people that have done this for years and years to help us make sure that what we're doing makes sense. I think this competition, you know, is a public example of what we do here at Caterpillar every day. There may be a public image of Caterpillar of and we certainly are a manufacturer of heavy equipment, but really we are a technology company and we provide that technology through large equipment like you see behind me here. We provide that technology through large equipment and services that we provide. I believe that's who Caterpillar really is.
It starts with a spark.
A spark that inspires possibilities.
A spark that ignites progress. For a century, Caterpillar has been that spark, powering progress across roads, cities, industries, and economies.
Together, we've built the foundation of the modern world. But as the world accelerates at an exponential pace, our customers face new challenges every day.
Understanding their needs fuels our purpose. We build a better, more sustainable world. To do that, we must listen, develop, and deliver tailored products and services that drive real outcomes. And those out transformation means more than building equipment.
It's getting closer to our customers without losing focus on creating quality products. It's leading the industry with differentiated digital and technology solutions and embracing new ways of working to accelerate innovation.
Ultimately, it's about solving our customers toughest challenges because the future demands it. We've honored our first 100 years and the strength of the legacy that propels us forward. This is our moment with technology at the forefront, customers at the center, and our people leading the way. The future belongs to us. Tomorrow takes courage.
Tomorrow takes commitment and a spark to ignite it. Tomorrow takes Caterpillar.
That's one small step for man, one piece for mankind.
No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long range exploration of space.
>> And liftoff of Artemis 1, we rise together back to the moon and beyond.
>> Now it is time to take longest strides.
Time for a great new American enterprise.
Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.
This is a research flight um suborbital by Blue Origin. So they fly their New Shepard rocket that they fly, you know, the Suborbital astronauts on. Um, and every once in a while they still fly research flights. And so we, um, through a NASA program, the NASA flight option program, um, we obtained a spot on this research flight to put our payload. And the payload, um, basically levitates a cloud of dust and is able to keep it in place without ever touching it for a long time. So in this flight specifically, we are demonstrating the technology and our hope would be in the future um to run astrophysical experiments um to measure the interaction of um light with clouds of dust that are homogeneous. Um and you know that would inform a lot of for example the JWST um data that is coming in because in the IR in the infrared specifically um large grains of dust interact with light um and so that's what we're looking at.
We're creating an artificial cloud of dust and you know this is a technology in itself. So that's a technology we're testing on the flight. If we have to run this under microgravity conditions, otherwise the dust would sort itself by weight. It would basically not stay in place because of Earth's gravity. But once you're in microgravity, you get a chance to actually levitate a homogeneous cloud of dust. It has several applications if you are able to levitate clouds of dust. So there's applications for atmospheric research, astrophysics research. And the one I haven't mentioned yet is also planetary research for example in rings. Um you have these type of environments where you have several particles interacting homogeneously.
Um but also formation early stages of planet formation. Um when the star forms and around the star there's still the gas and dust that's where the planets will form later. And in these early stages, it's really just clouds of dust interacting and the dust colliding, growing. I'm interested in using this technology for research down the line.
So, this technology was developed as part of, you know, the scientific community understanding, okay, we need an undisturbed clouds of dust so that we can do this research to understand how the dust behaves when it's un you know, really untouched. Um, so I, you know, I'm excited to down the line use this technology for actual research. And then number two, I think it's very exciting also to see the students have the opportunity to work on actual hardware and the solutions they come up with. Um, and just the contribution that they make um, and the contribution that the project makes to their education.
Um, I think that's a great motivation as well.
Come on up.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat.
I study asteroids and comets and uh mostly asteroids that could threaten Earth with an impact, but at the same time could also be used for mining, for space mining because they come really close to the Earth and they have very little gravity. So, not only are they a potential threat to Earth, which we are addressing, but they are also a potential resource. Water is the most precious material outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Once you can uh extract it from the surfaces of asteroids and then deliver it to the Earth's orbit cheaper than it costs to launch, then you're going to have a self-sustaining space economy where the water will be produced, you know, from the asteroids, broken up into hydrogen and oxygen, used as fuel by all these satellites, and then you would not have to put it into orbit. Putting things into orbit is very expensive. Mining asteroids is very expensive. But once you uh improve the technology so that the mining is cheaper than putting things into orbit, boy, you're going to open up all kinds of stuff. Right now, there is no asteroid asteroid large enough to uh wipe out civilization that is threatening us. So, but as a civil large impacts have happened and will happen again unless we avoid them and un unless we change the the course of the threatening aspect. But those are also the ones that we have studied in most detail and those are not threatening us right now. Um, along those lines, the NASA NASA's DART mission was designed to deflect an asteroid from its course with an impact. And it was a uh an experiment to try to determine if this technique would help would work. It was a spectacular success. It worked extremely well. The impact of of the NASA spacecraft onto this small asteroid that was orbiting a bigger one changed its orbit a lot more than we had anticipated. And so this technique is much more promising than we thought it was. And it is our number one technique to deflect asteroids that would threaten Earth. I became very interested in comets and maybe because when I was 10 years old, comedic came and it was so spectacular. My father woke my brother and I up and we went out and this spectacular comet that went from the horizon to the cenis. Um, and so since I was a child, I've been interested in astronomy specifically in comets. I started started studying comets. My PhD thesis was on that. And then there were these strange objects that were kind of like comets but and they had the orbits of comets and I found asteroids very interesting. So I shifted more into asteroids. Although I haven't left comets completely, I am part of a proposal that is being led by Cornell University to build the uh spacecraft to go to the nucleus of a comet, not an asteroid, and bring back a sample of it.
Boy, did it feel good to hire do my first two hires, which were uh Dan Brit, Professor Brit, and Professor Fernandez.
So, we have grown fast. Um we are um we're very proud of the fact that two of our um kind of junior faculty members uh have gotten the largest NASA grant or NASA contract that UCF has ever gotten for $35 million to build a rover that would study a volcanic area on the moon.
It's called Lunar Vice. And that's Professor Donald and Hannah and Professor Adrien Dav. So, uh, I'm just like, wow. I I cannot claim any credit for how good these people are, except that I did hire them.
So, I've been at the right place at the right time, and it's been very rewarding. I'm just uh really grateful because uh UCF has been um the best decision of my career. uh accepting the job at UCF. It it kind of looked good at the time, but boy, I had no idea that it was going to be this good. So, I I am grateful for UCF for giving me uh a home to develop this group and uh that I'm so proud of.
Hey, hey, hey.
Heat. Heat.
Hey, hey, hey.
So in this paper uh we actually looked at the first orbital test flight launch of the uh Starship rocket. That's SpaceX's new prototype rocket. That rocket is actually part of NASA's Aremis program to take us back to the moon. I think folks are probably familiar that launch actually didn't use like a water deluge or water suppression system on the launchpad. And so there was a pretty sizable failure of that launch pad.
Basically left a huge crater. And so our research was going in and figuring out what exactly happened there and doing the forensics on what is the failure mechanism and what does that tell us about when we land a vehicle that size on the moon. So this new class of landers that we're using as we go back to the moon are significantly larger than what we saw during the, you know, 1960s and 70s during the Apollo program.
And so with that comes higher levels of thrust, you know, bigger engines, bigger vehicles, which, you know, unfortunately kicks up more and more dust when you land on the surface. and and so a lot of my research is studying how can we better understand the equations that govern how much uh dust is kicked up and where does that dust go and and what does it do to equipment when it impinges on it. So um this Starship launch in particular was just kind of a unique data set where you have a brand new launch vehicle from a private company designed to take astronauts to and from the lunar surface. So we're able to use that launch and what the aftermath of that launch to help inform those equations and models. So there's a a lot of work going on. A lot of folks around the country are studying this problem of how do you land and launch a rocket from a a dusty lowgravity vacuum environment of the moon. I think this research in particular uh it does sort of give us some insights into those models of what we can expect for exhaust velocities and level of thrust. Um but I I think particularly as we look at building uh like landing our launch pads on the moon if we start to build a base this launch kind of shows us the importance of having maybe breathable launch pads which was more or less the the failure mechanism that we saw here on Earth uh where you end up with a huge pressure buildup underneath uh a concrete launchpad that kind of helps inform the designs that we're going to use eventually on the moon uh once we start to build those more permanent lunar infrastructure uh pieces.
Heat. Heat.
Heat.
Heat.
UCF was founded in 1963 with a clear purpose to prepare the talent, research, and innovations required to land humans on the moon. From the beginning, UCF has been a startup with a mission. This has always been an institution fueled by people with a sense of urgency. People who dare to imagine and are driven to create the future. Here at UCF, our motto has long been reach for the stars.
It is more than symbolic. It represents a future where explorers don't just look at the stars, they work among them.
Together, our leadership, ideas, and vision will accelerate discovery and chart a new trajectory. The breakthroughs imagined here can define the next century of space exploration.
Just 35 miles east of where we are right now, we took our first steps towards landing a man on the moon. Now with talent and minds gathered at space view, we are preparing for the next giant leap.
Let's go H.
I'm going behold.
We're building rovers. We're building lunar systems. We're building construction systems with the intent of having rovers we can use on the moon, build on the moon, build out of materials we've got on the moon so that we don't have to ship all of the materials up there. For the larger scale projects, I'm working with Capstone and senior design projects with Florida Space Grant. And uh all the software is written, the hardware is designed, the systems are put together, and they're assembled. They're all done by the students. Capstone and senior design teams do the actual work. Go through design and build. They collaborate across the teams. Everything is student design. On the education side, it's what can we do to fill in gaps that students are missing. Uh there's a lot of stuff that happened and is really kind of a recent development where things don't break. Kids don't have the idea, the concept of taking something apart. They don't have things they can go take apart. So there's assembly, working, building stuff, putting stuff together.
We found that people my side of 40 have done a lot of that. People the other side of 40 from where I am have not. So we've got projects for folks to go put stuff together like that. We started out trying to take rovers like what's behind me and use those with undergraduates, uh, freshmen. Their schedule was full.
We started looking at high schools and ran out to a teacher that said, "My elementary school kids can go build this." So, she is a fifth grade STEM teacher. We have fifth grade classes building these robots. The purple one back here was built by the fifth grade STEM class. It works as well as the other ones. It's uh the teachers created the lesson plan or we provide them with drawings. We don't provide them with uh detailed instructions or a video or anything. They've got to figure it out from the drawings. And so, fifth graders are figuring out transmissions, gearboxes, building the electronics, putting everything together. And it's the first time they've done anything like that. And they're absolutely awesome at it. So I do a lot of the mechanical design uh that happens with these robots. And now most of the design came to us by uh other people who are also working on these. But sometimes a little change needs to be made or a part needs to be updated. And that usually falls onto me. I always enjoy working with students. They're every time smarter than you think they are. Um and really catch on really well and easily and they love figuring stuff out. Um, generally speaking, it's a great time and they're all really smart and fun to work with. All the software stuff is pretty much provided for them. This project hopefully will get to a point where we can have maybe not elementary school students, but other grade school students starting to do a little bit of software editing and changing for learning. Uh, but for the elementary school students that are doing it now, they're all doing assembly. So with the software there is an interface that the user has to interact with whether that can be a phone app that can be a desktop app uh or it could be any kind of application you need to be able to have some kind of system where you can say I want to move forward I want to move backwards I want to go left right or I want to speed up or I want to slow down.
This has been worked on by a lot of different teams so it's been passed around a lot and then there's a lot of work that's been built up over the years and stuff. So if you were building everything from scratch, it would take you a long time. But uh what we do is like split task up into man manageable sizes. So each week you have something to do. You get to see some of the groups of kids split up and work together on this project that if you were doing by yourself like me, it might take you a while, but for them, they're enjoying every step of the way and they're doing it much much faster than at least I could by myself.
>> It's really fun. It's really rewarding um because you can see all the kids in and their mind working and watching them build and maybe some of them aren't interested at the start but by the end they've kind of gotten like involved as they see the the robot you know becoming becoming a real robot and actually able to move around. And so it's really it's really rewarding >> being able to work with these robots that not only are setting up future engineers to develop stuff to work on the moon and setting them up for their future. Um but it's also directly developing technologies that will be useful on the moon.
>> Watching them learn is very very it's it's it's just from my point of view it's absolutely fantastic to go watch.
There's a problem to go solve. They sit down they go solve the problem. They work through the problem. You'll see we give them an exploded view or an old style, just an expanded view of what the parts go like, and they'll be up there bringing the parts up, holding them up against the picture on the wall and putting things together that way.
They're mentored in how to use the tools installed by the students that we've got here. But the students of the elementary school kids are doing the work themselves, putting things together.
Hey, Each year, the search for minerals leads miners deeper into uninvited iding lands far from civilization where not only strength but ingenuity is required to pull ore from the earth. With groundbreaking advances in technology, Caterpillar is helping its customers overcome that challenge and changing the future of mining.
>> It was a complex environment. Nobody had done this before.
>> I got told on a daily basis, we can't do this with big hall trucks. It's not going to work.
Good mining is about the consistency that happens shift after shift, day after day, hour after hour.
>> Customers have million-dollar assets that are not being utilized, and that's costing them money.
>> Improve productivity, improve safety, >> show people that it would really work in a real mining environment.
>> We're actually making this happen. This is completely different than anything we've ever done before.
>> We have the world believing that this is this is the technology for the future.
Um, I became aware of Caterpillar at the NASA robotic mining competition. NASA has a goal to colonize the moon and Mars. Um, so to facilitate a lot of those activities, you've got to be able to excavate the material. So, it was a way to crowdsource some of the the ideas for how to build those excavators. Uh NASA's created this uh robotic mining competition that Caterpillar is a big part of. Every single year, we build this basically robotic excavator much like some of this stuff. I mean, we built a front end loader similar to that one year. Um and pretty much have like I think they give you like 10 minutes and you go up and down the track and and you mine and you bring it back and and uh they score you. So, autonomy is the big part of the competition now. In the past years, it's all it's been all about, you know, being able to move in the material. The material is something very difficult to work in. Um, but as as teams have evolved, the competition has evolved and and autonomy is a is a key part of that now. Um, and I think that's really one thing that sets our school apart. That's why we do so well. Um, we have an edge on on that autonomy perspective. So, I think that's kind of why CAT's interested in us. Honestly, robotics is a new way to solve problems.
So, there there's there's infinite possibilities to solve those problems.
Um and and you have a chance to make the world a better place. Honestly, um you're developing technologies that make everyone's life easier. You're automating task. Um you're just making a better quality of life for everyone. I I I normally associated CAT with just this big large um construction type company and it's it's really more of a tech company. Now getting to be inside and seeing all the all the innovative things that CAT does is is I I don't think people really appreciate all the technology that goes into CAT equipment.
Kind of expected it to be a little bit of intimidating honestly, you know, CAT engineers, you know, but but it's it's a it's a really fun work environment. I love coming to work every day. Honestly, Caterpillar has a lot of opportunities to to succeed. Um, one of the things that's really stuck out to me that I've learned uh during my time as an intern um just all the opportunities within the company. Um I'm I'm the kind of guy that likes to jump around. Um, I it's become apparent to me that within Caterpillar, if you want to have an entire career at Caterpillar, you have an opportunity to do all those different things and still stay within the company. You you don't necessarily have to leave and hop jobs and things like that. All those opportunities provided to you within the company. I would absolutely recommend the Caterpillar intern program to my peers. It has been a it has been a a great learning experience that I'm very thankful for.
What does it take to keep your site running 24/7? Most mines today run off of human decision-m and it is possible to run an operation effectively and efficiently with experienced people and limited technology.
Employees are trained to run and maintain equipment to achieve your site's goals. Experienced operators monitor and plan ahead down to the cycle for when it's time to fill up their fuel tanks. Maintenance crews know how to proactively plan for downtime to perform required work or address service needs.
Today, your mining operations are focused on driving more efficiency.
and well-being of your people, all while meeting market demands for the commodities you produce. But now, the energy transition is here, and your company is making commitments to a more sustainable future. Seasoned personnel are being asked to accomplish their same tasks and achieve their same KPIs using electric equipment they've never before experienced. In an electrified landscape, everything on site becomes more interdependent. Today, your team is refueling machines every 12 to 24 hours.
Tomorrow, you'll be monitoring energy management down to the minute, determining the ideal time to recharge each machine. To be successful, the mindset of the future must operate as an integrated and well orchestrated system more than ever before. You need a solution that's capable of holistically managing and optimizing your operations and able to instantly adapt to changes.
Fuel stations must be replaced with battery chargers and dynamic energy transfer solutions capable of delivering energy to your equipment without interrupting production. From using energy to travel to the truck's assigned load zone, navigating through the mine, and charging your machines as they travel uphill, watching the battery drain and refill in real time, dumping a load, and then making a stop at a stationary charger for a quick charge versus sitting in a queue at the shovel.
This is the smart mindsite of the future. a cohesive site management system that can be customized to meet your needs. Together with you, we can develop an integrated system that will help propel your operations into the future.
One that includes fleet management, autonomy, energy transfer, and energy storage solutions. At Caterpillar, we are ready for the challenges and opportunities of the energy transition.
And we are ready to work together with you to build a better, more sustainable world.
Heat. Heat.
I don't feel like This competition for NASA is part of their Centennial Challenge program. What we're going to see this week is two teams who have made it to the final step be able to actually print a 1/3 scale habitat and may ultimately be used on the surface of Mars. The kind of materials they have selected to build this habitat are materials that will represent what could be found on the surface of the moon or on the surface of Mars. Perhaps >> it's really a form of incentivized R&D where uh NASA provides prize money to pursue innovation that meets again NASA's mission objectives of space exploration but also can provide real value for for here terrestrially. Great example is um the work we did with NASA uh at Johnson Space Center where we worked on remote control and creating an operator center so he can drive a machine could be many miles away and that operator center actually move forward and we you can see it today in Caterpillar's command for dozing product for example. So certainly this technology that we're looking at this week has that opportunity of being a very disruptive transformational technology for even the construction industry um here on Earth.
>> NASA was interested in working with Caterpillar because they have experience of course in construction and if you want to build habitat we go to the experts right so we are reaching out to the people that have done this for years and years to help us make sure that what we're doing makes sense. I think this competition, you know, is a public example of what we do here at Caterpillar every day. There may be a public image of Caterpillar of and we certainly are a manufacturer of heavy equipment, but really we are a technology company and we provide that technology through large equipment like you see behind me here. We provide that technology through large equipment and services that we provide. I believe that's who Caterpillar really is.
It starts with a spark.
A spark that inspires possibilities.
A spark that ignites progress. For a century, Caterpillar has been that spark, powering progress across roads, cities, industries, and economies.
Together, we've built the foundation of the modern world. But as the world accelerates at an exponential pace, our customers face new challenges every day.
Understanding their needs fuels our purpose. We build a better, more sustainable world. To do that, we must listen, develop, and deliver tailored products and services that drive real outcomes. And those outcomes are just the beginning. Because sparking transformation means more than building equipment.
It's getting closer to our customers without losing focus on creating quality products. It's leading the industry with differentiated digital and technology solutions and embracing new ways of working to accelerate innovation.
Ultimately, it's about solving our customers toughest challenges because the future demands it. We've honored our first h 100red years and the strength of the legacy that propels us forward. This is our moment with technology at the forefront, customers at the center, and our people leading the way. The future belongs to us. Tomorrow takes courage.
Tomorrow takes commitment and a spark to ignite it. Tomorrow takes Caterpillar.
Unsppable.
That's one small step for man.
No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long range exploration of space.
>> And liftoff of Artemis 1, we rise together. Back to the moon and beyond.
>> Now it is time to take longer strides.
Time for a great new American enterprise.
Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.
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