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Cratering the Moon Challenge
Preliminary Design by:
Ms. Schuster's Class
Sells Middle School
NASA Projector

What I did was, first I thought about using the spring like drew in my design and realized it would not work, instead I used a Nascar shooter unit and to make it go angles I attached a protractor. Then I tested all of the angles. I found 15 degrees was the best angle, at least on the earth. The trick was the requirements would need the most ejecta which meant a person would need the most acceleration which would launch spinning or have height and the most gravitational potential energy which meant not too high and not too low (which was my hypothesis) and my hypothesis was correct after my results, I tested many times and each time I got a lot of speed and a lot of distance as I said earlier and this would save the space shuttle from getting extremely close to the moon to launch. I also realized there wouldn’t be much gravity so the impactor would have to go with such a force but according to Newton the force applied will push back (every action has an equal and opposite reaction in my own words), so it would be pushed back the same distance, so the second grabber unit should be programmed to go twice as far to get to the moon.

 FirstGov  NASA

Editor: Linda Conrad
NASA Official: Liza Coe
Last Updated: October 2007
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