CADRE Rovers: Students Work on NASA’s Lunar Tech Demo
Meet six interns who played a key hands-on role in development and testing of the hardware and software for CADRE, NASA’s upcoming lunar technology demonstration, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. CADRE will send a trio of small rovers to the Moon to work as a team and explore autonomously.
For more information about CADRE, visit: go.nasa.gov/cadre
For more information about internship opportunities, visit: jpl.nasa.gov/intern
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Transcript
Melissa Chow
My name is Melissa Chow.
Natalie Deo
My name is Natalie Deo.
Minsoo Kang
My name is Minsoo Kang.
Kaiy Muhammad
My name is Kaiy Muhammad.
Janelle Tran
My name is Janelle Tran.
Niall McKinnon
I'm Niall McKinnon.
Janelle Tran
I feel like it's the coolest thing anyone could ever do, especially in my field, tp say that you're working on a project that's going to space — going to the moon. Like, not a lot of people can say that.
Niall McKinnon
The experience I gained here was great, just because it was working so close to a flight mission. And really being able to see kind of the final stages of a project coming together like, you know, we're still developing software, we're still doing integrated testing as the actual flight vehicles are being built in the wall right behind us.
Kaiy Muhammad
I think the most fun part has been operating rovers. So getting to be hands-on working with the flight software engineers, so you get to talk to them about what they're doing and you get to help them actually accomplish that goal.
Minsoo Kang
I assist a lot of testings of our development model, and also I assist collecting the ground truth data during the mobility testings for CADRE, so we could utilize that data to further enhance our navigation algorithms.
Natalie Deo
Seeing it go from just a basic design and a concept to the developmental model taking its first steps to now the flight models taking its first steps. Because this is a technology demonstration, this is going to shape the future of space exploration. And so I feel like I'm making a difference.
Melissa Chow
This is actually my graduating semester from my bachelor's, so being able to have this internship experience right before I go out into industry has been invaluable. At times it can be overwhelming, but always in a good way, because I feel like no matter what sort of challenges that I've had to face every day or whatever new things that we have to learn, I'm always getting something out of it.
Natalie Deo
CADRE was so unique in which I felt like I had a family. I felt like I was making meaningful contributions, and I just I felt at home and I was excited to come to work every single day.