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American Corner Tashkent  ·  Case File LUM-001  ·  Status: Open

Project

Lumen

To the light

Somewhere on the Moon's south pole, a rover went dark.

Your job: build the next one — and make sure it survives where the last one didn't.

Apply now Open the case file

Exhibit A — The case

One rover
never
reported back.

The lunar south pole is the hardest ground anyone has tried to drive on: craters that haven't seen sunlight in two billion years, −180 °C in the shadows, and a Sun that never climbs more than a few degrees off the horizon.

Something down there stopped a rover mid-traverse. Nobody has published a clean answer. You'll build the replacement — and the build itself is the investigation. Every bracket you print and every line of code you write is a hypothesis about what went wrong.

Exhibit A-1 · Telemetry

The last signal

A partial packet, then nothing. The final readings are the only witness you get, and they don't agree with each other.

Exhibit A-2 · Terrain

The shadow line

Sunlight at the pole arrives sideways. Cross the wrong ridge at the wrong hour and your power budget is gone.

Exhibit A-3 · Hardware

The tolerance

Nothing failed dramatically. Small things added up — which is exactly how real missions are lost.

Cut to

Meanwhile, in Tashkent

Exhibit B — The assignment

Design it.
Print it.
Wire it. Drive it.

American Corner Tashkent is opening applications for a one-month, hands-on robotics program: you and a crew of fellow builders take a prototype Moon rover from empty table to working hardware.

You'll model parts in CAD and print them, cut and solder the wiring, write the control code, and put the whole thing on a test terrain built by your own science team. Mentors who placed in the Top 10 at the Space Hackathon and work on UzCosmos projects sit at the table with you — not in front of a slide deck.

No prior experience needed. Curiosity and the drive to build something real will do.

  • 01Design and build a prototype Moon rover — chassis, drivetrain, electronics, code.
  • 02Master the fundamentals of robotics and engineering by doing, not by watching.
  • 03Work side by side with mentors who build real hardware — and can tell you why it broke.
  • 04Showcase your rover at Maker Faire 2027.

Exhibit C — Crew roster

Pick your seat.

You join a crew and take one role. Every part you make decides whether the rover succeeds — and the crew finds out together, live, on the test floor.

ENG-01

Engineering

Chassis, brackets, wheels. You model the parts, print them, and find out which ones break first.

PRG-02

Programming

Motors, sensors, comms. You turn power into movement and telemetry into answers.

SCI-03

Science

Terrain, payload, test plan. You decide what the rover has to survive — then prove it did.

CTL-04

Mission control

Timeline, budget, calls. You keep the crew building and log every decision — including the bad ones.

Exhibit D — Personnel files

The people
at the table.

Three mentors, all under 25, all with hardware that has actually flown, launched, or won something.

Anastasia, lead mentor

File 01

Anastasia

The one who builds satellites

Lead Mentor · Webster University in Tashkent

  • Certified CubeSat Engineering Mentor — professional diploma, "Education of the Future" program, Moscow.
  • 1st place, "Orbita" international satellite-building tournament, with Team Uzbekistan — ran the payload and the biological experiment on a stratospheric launch.
  • Top 30, UniSat 3.0 (UNICEF Uzbekistan × UzCosmos).
  • Top 30, Airbus Fly Your Ideas 2026 — team advanced to Round 2.
  • Founded and led Webster Space Club, growing it from 20 to 300 members.
  • Built and ran the two-month Cosmic Research Club at American Corner Tashkent.
  • Set up the UzCosmos × Webster University partnership and coordinated the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding.
Diyor Mirzayev, hardware and robotics mentor

File 02

Diyor

The one who makes it move

Hardware & Robotics Mentor · TUIT Robotics

  • Robotics engineer at TUIT Robotics — built "Sapyor," a lunar-rover-style 6-wheel robot with a 2 kg robotic arm on Arduino Mega + Raspberry Pi 5.
  • 1st place, TUIT University Cup (robotics, automation & autonomous systems); 3rd place, "Young Engineer" Republican Competition.
  • Designed a 750 × 550 mm rocker-bogie rover platform in Fusion 360 — differential pivot, 240 mm wheels, 150 mm ground clearance.
  • Robotics trainer at Tech4Impact: 200+ students in electronics, microcontrollers and satellite construction.
  • Trainer for UniSat 3.0 — wrote the 16-week CubeSat 3U curriculum.
  • Full-stack developer: FastAPI, React, WebSocket telemetry, live camera streaming from Raspberry Pi to remote control clients.
  • B.Sc. Computer Engineering, Tashkent University of Information Technologies.
Kamila Temirova, online mentor

File 03

Kamila

The one with the keyboard

Online Mentor · Harvard Extension School

  • 2nd place, ActInSpace Hackathon Tashkent 2026 — co-developed "Skymaker," an automated internal cargo-packaging concept for the Starlab commercial space station.
  • UzCosmos Ambassador; interned at UzCosmos.
  • UniSat 3.0 finalist (top 20) — built a CubeSat with the team and launched it to 27 km with a live scientific payload on board.
  • Co-author, published research: "Analyzing the impact of external environmental conditions on bio-objects," UzCosmos / Tech4Impact / UNICEF Uzbekistan, 2025.
  • Partner at Webster Space Club — ran communications and programming for the club end to end.

Exhibit E — Enrolment

From Apollo to Artemis.
Now your turn.

Applications are open. Fill in the official form — and if you'd rather be reminded first, leave your contact and we'll write to you before the board closes.

  • ProgrammeProject LUMEN — one-month Moon rover build
  • WhereAmerican Corner Tashkent (AUT)
  • Board opens5 August
  • CostFree — selection by application
  • RequirementCuriosity. That's the whole list.

Open the official application

Crew intake · LUM-001

Leave your contact

Thirty seconds. We'll send you the briefing and the deadline reminder.