Science

Curiosity, Perseverance, Spirit, and Opportunity. Every Mars mission has had one thing in common: a drive to understand the unknown through the lens of science. This is the very same mission behind the Science subteam, where we search the ‘Martian’ surface for the biomarkers of life. From designing lab-on-a-chip microfluidic systems to building DIY Raman spectrometers, success on our team requires drive, innovation, and a keen eye for detail.

Recruitment now closed.

Recruitment now closed.Explore subteams

The systems we build

Photo slot

SCIENCE-01

Life Detection on the UBC Rover.

Life Detection

We develop assays to determine the presence of life.

Using the soil collected by our onboard Rover Lab, our life detection system uses assays developed by our Science subteam to determine whether a soil sample contains life. We work on optimizing existing life detection assays using our onboard spectrophotometer and developing novel assays.

Our subteam focuses on all kinds of projects. This can be anything from wet and dry lab work, literature review, design and printing of custom microfluidic chips on our new FormLabs 3B+ resin printer, designing and building sensing equipment and circuits, or the development of miniaturized onboard testing equipment.

We need to create assays that can be used on our rover without human intervention, making the optimization of our assays incredibly important.

Photo slot

SCIENCE-02

Hardware on the UBC Rover.

Hardware

We design the hardware that makes our science testing possible.

We build and improve the spectrophotometer system used in our autonomous testing and work to become the first student team to develop lab-on-a-chip capabilities for life detection. This includes all aspects of the design, function, calibration, and integration with these subsystems.

Our current system integrates with the Rover Lab to perform on-board testing on a macro scale. This takes up significant weight on the Rover, so our current R&D project is to miniaturize the whole testing system onto a lab-on-a-chip using our FormLabs 3B+ resin printer.