Mississauga students win rare chance at simulated lunar rover mission

A Mississauga elementary school class operated a lunar rover on a simulated mission to find ice deposits on the moon.

About 30 Grade 6 students at Lisgar Middle School won the chance through the Lunar Rover Research Challenge. The students are in the International Business and Technology Grade 6 class led by teachers Monika Szechynski and Eric Elsaad.

In 2023, Lisgar Middle School students competed against 16,000 students across Canada to win the Lunar Rover Research Challenge competition. The challenge is offered through Let’s Talk Science, Canadensys Aerospace Corporation and Avalon Space, with support from the Canadian Space Agency.

To win, teams of five students from the Grade 6 class completed a task to map out the most efficient route for the rover on the moon. One team’s submission won allowing the entire class a chance at the simulated lunar rover mission.

This team of five Grade 6 students submitted the winning pitch allowing the entire class a chance at seeing the lunar rover in action.

Lisgar was the only elementary school and one of only four schools in Canada to win the challenge in this round.

This Tuesday (Jan. 16), the students got their mission: find ice deposits on a mock lunar landscape using the remotely controlled Canadensys Lunar Rover. The 30-kg lunar rover will be sent to the moon’s south pole region as early as 2026. It is Canada’s first lunar rover.

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“The students were very excited… they were jumping around, they were cheering at some points, some points were kind of stressful until they really focused and worked together to accomplish a task,” Elsaad tells insauga.com.

The simulation is set up in a facility in Stratford, Ontario, and the students operated the rover from their classroom, said Elsaad.

The facility has a mock lunar surface with rocks, craters and sand.

Students from the navigators team in action. Photo: Jan Currie

The class was divided into five groups and each had a task — drivers – responsible for controlling rover; navigators – responsible for directing and mapping out where the rover would go; the scientists took measurements and checked if there is water potential or not; payload operators gathered the data from the rover sensors; and finally, the health monitors kept track of the batteries as well as the temperature, said Elsaad.

The group of five students whose pitch won the competition were the drivers, he added.

Momina Gallani, 12, was one of the students in the driver’s group.

“It was really fun and exciting being part of the lunar rover,” said Momina.

Momina was surprised the class won.

“I was actually shocked because out of 16,000 students in Canada, we are the only elementary school to win,” Momina said.

Teammate Aanya Baranwal, 11, also enjoyed the chance to drive the lunar rover.

“It was a really fun experience to actually secure the lunar rover,” Aanya said.

Aanya said she learned about the moon and how the lunar rover works.

The payload operators team works on the mission. Photo: Jan Currie

The simulation took about two hours and they were successful. Completing the mission was a highlight.

“Everybody got up and started jumping around,” said Aanya.

It was a great, hands-on learning experience. The students learned how challenging it is to operate a lunar rover and find ice on the moon, said Elsaad.

“(They learned) about the unpredictability of space travel and how things can go wrong at any moment. And they have to learn how to adapt,” he said.

And there were transferable skills such as how to collaborate in teams, how to problem solve and how to communicate effectively.

“All of those things can be applied in any other jobs that they face in the future,” Elsaad said.

Main photo: Jan Currie