Lo-Temp

Explore the LO-TEMP Game

A simulation of the moon created by the passionate LO-TEMP (LOng TErm Moon Project) team


To play the game:

1. Download the zipped file linked below to your computer

2. Unzip the file

3. Double click LO-temp.exe to run the game

4. In the game, click Start, then Host in the top right corner

5. To exit the game, do Ctrl+Escape or whatever your computer's escape shortcut is

Play the Game

Moon Rover ADC 2024 by lo-temp on Sketchfab

The Goal:

We are trying to enable NASA to simulate a mission to the lunar south pole through our app which we need to be:

  • Fun to explore and use for our audience
  • Easily accessible for as many users as possible
  • Accurate in its resemblence of the true lunar mission

Throughout this process, we've been writing articles about our app progress, community and professional outreaches, and interesting quantum computing topics to share with our high school and community. Click below to read about all we've been up to!

Read Our Blog Posts

Team

Community Members Reached

Hours Spent

Dedicated Members

Timeline

Take a look through our app development journey, from start to finish!


Formed a NASA ADC team

September 27th, 2023


On September 27th, we finalized our team for the NASA ADC competition. The team consists of 8 members: Sanjay, Harinarayan, Michael, Prince, Naisha, Ethan, Nishi, and Josh.

Conducted Preliminary Research

September 29th-October 7th, 2023


Throughout this time period, all the team members spent time researching the challenge. We enhanced our space, moon, and NASA-related knowledge and gained as much background information as possible. Each team member also focused on a specific landing site to research and created potential maps for the app. We also tried to learn about the technologies we would be using to create our app, including Unity, Blender, and SPICE.

Held First Team Meeting

October 8th, 2023


On October 8th, we held our first of many team meetings. We divided our roles based on our strengths, and also discussed potential landing sites. Each team member presented the research they compiled for a specific landing site.

Finalized Landing Site

October 10th, 2023


By this date, we had decided the landing site we wanted to focus on: Peak Near Shackleton. We found that in November 2024 and December 2025, the low-slope areas of Peak receive ample sunlight and Earth visibility, the most important factors in landing site selection. Peak also represents the quintessential balance between PSRs, high visibility areas and favorable signs of water ice.

Finished Terrain and Basics

October 15th, 2023


By this date, we had finally confirmed the game development platform that we would be using: Unity. We had also made a few beginning steps with the project, including using Unity Terrain Tools meshes generated from 16-bit heightmaps created from the ADC data, with Gaussian filtering applied for smoothing, to create the basic terrain.

Finished Positional Displays

October 22nd, 2023


By this date, we had edited the user interface to display latitude and longitude, height, azimuth and elevation, and UTC time based on the user’s location. We also finished our implementations of Matplotlib, OpenCV in Python, and GIMP to generate comparable maps for each of the 5 regions, along with colorbars to show the statistical range in each data file.

Met with a NASA Engineer

October 25th, 2023


One of our team members reached out to NASA aerospace engineer, Lee K. Bingham, for advice and guidance on our project. Bingham was the lead for NASA's DUST project, and has had experience developing simulations for NASA. He agreed to meet with us virtually, so on October 25th we gathered in our school’s conference room to talk to him. We discussed our plans for the project with Bingham, and asked for advice and suggestions. He also addressed our questions about rover and dust simulation technicalities, possible outreach plans, and landing site preferences.

Finished Implementing SPICE Toolkit

November 6th, 2023


After being introduced to the SPICE toolkit by classmates at school, we decided to implement real-time positioning of the Earth and Sun. By November 6th, we finished leveraging the full functionality of SPICE in Unity with the CSPICE wrapper API, facilitating real-time and predictive Sun and Earth positioning, Earth orientation, and azimuth and elevation calculation while teaching us about polar to stereographic conversion, reference frame rotation matrices and quaternions.

Finished Pathfinding

November 12th, 2023


By November 12th, we had finished our implementations of the Dijkstra and Theta* with angular sweep pathfinding algorithms. We turned our original graph, which contained distance information in the nodes and slope information in the edges, into a graph that consolidated all information in the edges through a process known as node-splitting. We also edited our app so that users could pick start and end points to generate these paths.

Finished all 3D Assets

November 29th, 2023


We decided to use Blender to create original 3D assets including a lunar base, solar panels, communication checkpoints and rover, as well as render all our visualizations. By the end of November, we were finished with all of our CAD and rendering work, and had also implemented the assets in the Unity platform.

Hosted School Quantum Challenge

November 30th, 2023-December 3rd, 2023


Our team hosted a competition on Quander, a game world containing quantum-computing-themed games that cover the basic concepts of quantum computing including superposition, probabilistic outcomes, entanglement, measurement, and quantum circuits. The top 3 competitors received prizes based on the number of mini-games completed through the platform.

Hosted Space Jeopardy at School

December 1st, 2023


At our school’s annual talent show and international dinner event, our team hosted a fun “Space Jeopardy'' event. Students ranging from high school freshman to seniors and school alumni had the opportunity to gain space knowledge. LO-TEMP team members wrote 24 space-related questions in 5 original categories: Small Step, Gen Artemis, Quantum-mania, Moon-shot, and Star Stud. Multiple teams composed of 3 students each were featured as the audience learned and played along as a fun and engaging way to expand their space knowledge and awareness.

Finished the User Interface

December 5th, 2023


By this date, we had finished up all aspects of our user interface. This includes sidebar menus allowing users to change the lighting for ease of mobility and a communication heatmap that models signal strength from the Earth using a post-processing graph. We also allowed users to toggle between realistic terrain, height, slope, and azimuth and elevation to the Earth, and added other unique UI features.

Deployed our Project

December 7th, 2023


After all of the hard work we put into creating the app, it was finally time to deploy it. We published our game live to Netcode, Unity’s easy-to-use multiplayer networking implementation. Creating the app from start to finish was a long journey, but a fruitful one nonetheless. Thanks to everyone who supported our project, and the official NASA ADC coordinators for allowing us to compete in such a fulfilling challenge.

What we're doing:

Using the Artemis III candidate landing sites, we analyzed maps and models using multiple data sources. We analyzed the latitude, longitude, heightmap, slope, azimuth and elevation for 5 regions

The Game Plot:

The Artemis crew has successfully landed on the moon's south pole but with some damage to the Starship landing module, restricting them from being able to return to Earth.

Wayfinding and Pathfinding

We sought an optimized path to provide the shortest and smoothest route. We used real time calculations using grids and provided users the ability to select their start or end point anywhere. We used the Dijkstra and Theta* with angular sweep path planning algorithms to do this.

Modeling

Using the Blender CAD platform to create our rover, we want the most realistic transportation device to be used in the game.

Platforms Utilized

We utilized numerous platforms for team communication, code hosting, modeling, and much more. Through our respective roles, we were able to develop a successful project:

Unity Engine

Using Unity's game development platform and C# tools, we were able to create our 3D simulation.

Blender

We used Blender for 3D Modeling for our rover which will be implemented into our game

Google Drive + Github

We used Google Drive and Github for project storage and to seamlessly allow access of code and media for all users

SPICE

We used SPICE (Spacecraft Planet Instrument C-matrix Events) for the height, slope, latitude, longitude, and other visualizations.

Photos

Look through what we've done!

  • All
  • App Progress
  • Outreach

App Progress

basic color visualization of height data

Outreach

our team and our advisor chatting virutally with Lee K. Bingham, NASA engineer

App Progress

terrain and material visualization in Unity editor

Outreach

our team meeting with a NASA engineer in our school's conference room

Outreach

us talking to a NASA engineer about our app plans

App Progress

terrain visualization and moon setting

Outreach

our meeting with Lee K. Bingham, NASA engineer

App Progress

latitude, longitude, elevation, and color visualizations

Outreach

the Space Jeopardy question categories

App Progress

first-person player astronaut character

Outreach

Space Jeopardy competitors on stage

App Progress

terrain visualizations and astronaut first-person player

Outreach

Space Jeopardy game at our school event

App Progress

color and height visualizations

Outreach

game for the Quantum Challenge we hosted

Outreach

Space Jeopardy with kids at temple