Rover Villa · Their mission ended. Their story didn’t.

Project at a glance

Rover Villa is not just a website. It is a community.

An online memorial and an offline community that brings the stories of the machines NASA left on the Moon and Mars to school-age learners, their families and their teachers.

Team: Galactic Poet, five students, Jagannath University, Dhaka
Final project: rovervilla.space
Project demo: 30-second video
Team film: 4-minute film (Google Drive)
Source code: github.com/asfi50/rovervilla
Instagram: @rover_villa

What lives in Rover Villa

A growing family of machinesfrom the Moon and Mars
A growing shelf of illustrated booksone true event per chapter
Games, cartoon and NASA 3D modelslearn a mission by doing it
Credited NASA archive photosevery claim with its source

Since the 1960s, NASA has left hardware on the Moon and Mars. Young learners mostly hear about the missions that are still active, and the rest sits in dense technical archives. Rover Villa gives these machines, from Ranger 7 in 1964 to Ingenuity’s final flight in January 2024, and every new resident that joins them, a home online and a community offline.

Read the full summary

We remember them the way we remember great people: where they were born, the life they lived, what they discovered and their last signal home. On rovervilla.space, visitors read a growing collection of illustrated books as a comic or a calm storybook, play browser games built on real mission moments, watch the Rover Villa Jr cartoon series and turn NASA 3D models in their hands.

Every date, number and photo traces back to a listed source; imagined lines and squeezed game timings are labelled. Beyond the screen, Rover Villa is a community: reels on Instagram, outdoor shoots, and face-to-face sessions where students learn space science together and take the stories home to their friends and families.

The challenge asks“Tell the story of some or all of this equipment that introduces school-age space enthusiasts to the hardware and the science it made possible.”

Story-drivenEach machine tells its life in its own voice, one true event per chapter.

School-ageComics, a read-aloud storybook, games and a cartoon series for kids.

HardwareNASA’s own 3D models with numbered parts.

ScienceWhat each machine discovered, with its fact file and sources.

AccuracyA source link for every claim; unknowns stay unknown.

Rover Villa at the centre of the website, books and comics, games, Rover Villa Jr, reels, outdoor activities, NASA 3D models and tribute walls

Node images: site, reels and AI-made art

02 · One home, two places

Not just a website. A community.

A retired aeroplane gets to rest in a museum. A rover never comes home. So we built Rover Villa as a home that lives in two places at once: online, where a website reaches a curious child anywhere, and offline, where people learn about space together.

01The websiteProfiles, life stories, last signals, galleries and sources.

02Books & comicsRead as a comic or a storybook, with read-aloud.

03GamesDo the mission with your hands, then read the real story.

04Rover Villa JrThe old machines live together in a little village.

05Reels & InstagramShort vertical reels on @rover_villa.

06Outdoor activitiesThe Aviation Museum and the Jagannath University campus.

07NASA 3D modelsPull a model apart, download it for 3D printing.

08Tribute wallsVisitors leave each machine a message.

02 · What it does

A quiet line on a data sheet becomes a story.

For a child, a parent or a teacher, Rover Villa turns a mission record into something you can read, play, watch and hold.

Rover Villa home page on rovervilla.space

Where They Rest: the Moon and Mars globe with landing sites

Timeline of the machines from 1964 to 2024

rovervilla.space · home, where they rest, timeline 1964–2024 · includes AI-made illustration

Visitors meet machines on the Moon and on Mars, and new residents keep moving in. They read each life chapter by chapter as comic panels or as a calm storybook with adjustable text and a read-aloud button, and their progress is saved. They play games that turn real mission moments into hands-on tasks, then see the real story with its sources.

They watch Rover Villa Jr, spin Mars and the Moon to find each landing site at its published coordinates, follow every machine on one timeline from 1964 to 2024, and pull NASA’s 3D models apart part by part. On each machine’s tribute wall they can leave a message.

Three ways to explore: Standard, Story (a scroll-driven cinematic journey, live for Opportunity) and Timeline.

Every machine’s profile

Catalogue cardName, nickname, born and last-signal dates, resting place, key stats

Life’s workThe mission chapter by chapter, with archive photos

Last signalThe final transmission and the story of the goodbye

3D explorerInteractive model with numbered parts

Gallery · TributeCredited photos, mission videos, messages from visitors

SourcesThe full list, one link per claim

02 · Meet the residents

A growing family of machines. Different worlds, same curiosity.

The residents so far · AI-made illustrations

Where each one rests

Machine	World	What it was	Years	Where it rests	How it ended
Ranger 7	MOON	Impactor	1964	Mare Cognitum	Impact, 31 Jul 1964
Surveyor 1	MOON	Lander	1966–67	Oceanus Procellarum	Last signal, 7 Jan 1967
Apollo 11 lander · Eagle	MOON	Lander	1969	Tranquility Base	Left behind, 21 Jul 1969
Lunar Roving Vehicle	MOON	Rover	1971	Hadley–Apennine	Last signal, 2 Aug 1971
Viking 1	MARS	Lander	1975–82	Chryse Planitia	Last signal, 11 Nov 1982
Viking 2	MARS	Lander	1975–80	Utopia Planitia	Last signal, 11 Apr 1980
Pathfinder & Sojourner	MARS	Lander + rover	1996–97	Ares Vallis	Last signal, 27 Sep 1997
Mars Polar Lander	MARS	Lander	1999	Planum Australe (presumed)	Lost on arrival, 3 Dec 1999
Spirit	MARS	Rover	2003–10	Gusev crater	Last signal, 22 Mar 2010
Opportunity · Oppy	MARS	Rover	2003–18	Meridiani Planum	Last signal, 10 Jun 2018
Phoenix	MARS	Lander	2007–08	Vastitas Borealis	Last signal, 2 Nov 2008
LCROSS	MOON	Impactor	2009	Cabeus crater	Impact, 9 Oct 2009
GRAIL · Ebb & Flow	MOON	Twin orbiters	2011–12	Sally K. Ride Impact Site	Impact, 17 Dec 2012
InSight	MARS	Lander	2018–22	Elysium Planitia	Last signal, 15 Dec 2022
Ingenuity · Ginny	MARS	Helicopter	2020–24	Jezero crater	Final flight, 18 Jan 2024

The villa grows as new stories are added. Years run from launch to end of mission; dates from the project’s source file.

02 · Read their stories

A book for every machine. Every chapter is one true event.

Every machine has its own illustrated book, told in its own voice, and the shelf grows with every new resident.

Two ways to read. A comic with panels, speech bubbles and sound effects, or a calm storybook.
For every reader. Adjustable text size and a read-aloud button.
Real pictures inside. Comic panels mix credited NASA archive photos with illustrations of the machine.
A fact file after every chapter. The key numbers, each with its own source link; progress is saved.
Honest voices. The machines’ first-person lines are imagined retellings, and each book says so. Events, dates and numbers are real.

Reader, catalogue and comic reel · include AI-made illustration

02 · Play the missions

Do the mission with your hands. Then read the real story.

Free games that play right in the browser, with more added as the villa grows. Each turns a real moment from a mission into something you do yourself, then shows “The real story”: the actual facts, with sources.

Ranger 7Last PicturesFall toward the Moon and keep taking pictures

GRAILEbb & FlowFind hidden masses under the Moon from two spacecraft

LCROSSInto the PlumeHit a dark crater, then fly through the plume to find water

Mars Polar LanderTrust the SignalBe the landing computer and cut the engines at the right moment

VikingIs Anything Alive?Run Viking’s soil tests and decide what they mean

InSightMarsquake HunterRead seismograms and find how far away each quake struck

IngenuityThin AirClimb, hover and land a helicopter in Mars’s thin air

Spirit & OpportunityChasing SunshineKeep a solar rover alive, one Martian day at a time

Touchdown · land on Mars and the Moon in 3D and find the machines we left there.

Games are not evidenceSpeeds, timings and controls are squeezed to make the games playable, and every game says so. The facts panel beside each game is the cited part: for example 4,308 Ranger 7 pictures in its last 17 minutes, 1,319 marsquakes heard by InSight, and Ingenuity’s 72 flights.

02 · Watch & scroll

A cartoon village, and reels where kids already are.

Rover Villa Jr

An animated series in which the old machines live together in a little village and tell their stories, in a streaming-style video section with a player that remembers where you stopped.

Episode posters · AI-made

EP 01Oppy’s tour of Rovervilla
EP 02Why did you go to Mars?
EP 03Seven minutes of terror
EP 04Oppy’s last signal
EP 05Never tell Buggy it was staged
EP 06The leak
EP 07The night call
EP 08Spirit’s lucky broken wheel

Reels on Instagram

Short vertical reels on @rover_villa: Mars and Moon missions, Curiosity’s 21 organic molecules, Spirit’s broken wheel as a pop-art comic, cinematic rover edits.

Reel: Spirit's broken wheel as a pop-art comic

@rover_villa reels · some use AI-made art

“Somewhere in the universe, wheels are rolling and stories are waiting. Welcome to RoverVilla.”Instagram bio

Our narrator at the Bangladesh Aviation Museum, the word OFFLINE behind her

02 · Outdoor activities · our narrator at the Bangladesh Aviation Museum

We are not only online. We do a lot offline too.

“We go to schools, colleges and universities, and to places where people who want to learn space science come together. There, we teach and share it face to face, so people learn together, and take it home to their friends and families.”From the team’s Space Apps film

Bangladesh Aviation Museum, Agargaon. We filmed our story among retired aircraft: when these planes were done flying they ended up here, where anyone can still see them. A rover on the Moon or Mars just stays where it stopped.

Jagannath University, Dhaka. Rover Villa on laptops on campus, and on the big screen in a university hall.

02 · How it works

From the archive to a story a kid tells a friend at lunch.

NASA mission recordsNSSDCA, NASA Science, JPL, NTRS, Apollo journals, PDS

One source of truthOne data file for every machine, chapter and game, each with its sources

Stories in many formsProfiles, books, comics, games, 3D, cartoon, reels

PeopleOnline at rovervilla.space and Instagram; offline at sessions

The rules we kept

Facts only. Every date, number and “last words” line comes from a listed source. No invented quotes.
Imagined voices are labelled. The books are retellings, not transmissions.
Conflicting values stay attributed, each with its own source.
Unknowns stay unknown, such as a rover’s exact final position.
Games and art are not evidence. They explain; they are never shown as telemetry.
Real photos are always credited and never mixed up with illustrations.

Add a machine to one data file and its profile, globe pin, timeline entry, tribute wall and sitemap entry all appear.

Tools, languages and hardware

FrameworkNext.js 16 App Router, statically generated pages

UIReact 19, TypeScript 5, Tailwind CSS 4

3Dthree.js: globes, NASA models (Draco glTF), Touchdown

MotionGSAP ScrollTrigger, CSS keyframes, respects reduced motion

GamesCanvas 2D, seeded terrain, Web Audio sound

ReadingWeb Speech API read-aloud, progress saved in the browser

HostingOpenNext on Cloudflare Workers

PhonesOwn phone layouts, glass tab bar, swipe rows

MediaCamera shoots, video editing and animation for the films, cartoon and reels

Full code and setup: github.com/asfi50/rovervilla

Students at Jagannath University, the word TOGETHER behind them

02 · Benefits & what we hope to achieve

A museum stays in one city. A website reaches a curious child anywhere.

01Learn how missions workedGames, comics and a cartoon show how the Moon and Mars machines operated, instead of a list of facts.

02Trust what you learnA source link for every claim, credited NASA photos and clear labels for imagined lines keep it reliable for students and teachers.

03Every reader is welcomeComic or storybook, adjustable text, read-aloud and phone layouts for different ages and devices.

04Hold the hardwareNASA 3D models with numbered parts, downloadable as GLB or STL for 3D printing.

05Learn togetherReels, outdoor activities and face-to-face sessions turn solo screen time into something a group shares and takes home.

“On a data sheet, a rover stuck in the sand is one quiet line. With us, it becomes a story a kid tells a friend at lunch.”

What we hope to achieveWe want to pair the reach of a website with learning in person. We hope to take Rover Villa to many more cities, to schools, colleges, universities and the places where people come to learn space science, and teach it face to face. And with Artemis taking NASA back to the Moon, there will be new missions, new machines and more stories for Rover Villa.

**NASA · as11-40-5927**Eagle, Tranquility Base, 1969

**NASA · as15-88-11901**Moon rover at Hadley, 1971

**NASA · PIA00563**Viking 1, first colour view, 1976

**NASA · PIA01122**Sojourner rolls off, 1997

03 · NASA data

Built on real records. Every claim traces back.

Behind every page are mission catalogues, engineering reports, review-board findings, flight journals and press releases. Every claim in the code links to its source; the most cited are science.nasa.gov, jpl.nasa.gov, nasa.gov, NSSDCA and the NASA image archive.

NASA data and what Rover Villa uses it for

NASA data or resource	What Rover Villa uses it for
NSSDCA (NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive)	Catalogue identity (COSPAR IDs), launch and mission chronology, spacecraft and instrument descriptions, outcomes, coordinates
NASA Science mission pages	Mission summaries, key dates, science results, end-of-mission context
NASA/JPL and NASA Photojournal	Engineering updates, discoveries, final-contact reports, image captions and IDs
NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)	Mission reports, review-board findings, exact numbers for LCROSS, Surveyor, Mars Polar Lander and others
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and Apollo Flight Journal	Apollo 11 and 15 transcripts, elapsed times, alarms, surface science, ascent
Planetary Data System and NAIF SPICE	Archived images and data, instrument products, mission geometry
NASA Image and Video Library	Archive photos with their IDs, titles, credits and links
NASA 3D Resources	Textured models of the Apollo Lunar Module, Viking lander, Mars Exploration Rover, InSight and Ingenuity
NASA Astromaterials 3D	Apollo sample records for the Lunar Roving Vehicle chapters
LROC WAC via NASA Moon Trek	The Moon surface map on the Where They Rest globe

Catalogue records used1964-041A Ranger 7 · 1966-045A Surveyor 1 · 1969-059C Eagle · 1971-063C LRV · 2009-031B LCROSS · 2011-046A GRAIL · 1975-075C Viking 1 · 1975-083C Viking 2 · 1996-068A Pathfinder · 1999-001A Mars Polar Lander · 2003-027A Spirit · 2003-032A Opportunity · 2007-034A Phoenix · 2018-042A InSight · 2020-052A Ingenuity

How a judge can check a claim: find the machine, open its sources in the project’s data file or the chapter’s fact file, follow the link and find the passage. If a claim cannot complete that chain, it is qualified, marked as unknown or removed.

Other data, resources and tools

USGS AstrogeologyViking MDIM 2.1 colour mosaic, the Mars globe

LROC (Arizona State University)Later orbital views of landing and impact sites

HiRISE (University of Arizona)Orbital views of Mars landing sites

Lunar and Planetary InstituteMission background

Space Agency PartnersNo partner data sets are used in this version

Music in Rover Villa Jr“Trivial Call” by Blue Dot Sessions (CC BY 3.0) · “Bouncing” by HoliznaCC0 (CC0) · “Crazy Glue” by Josh Woodward (CC BY 3.0) · “Wildflowers” by Scott Buckley (CC BY 4.0) · six tracks by Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com (CC BY 4.0)

Code and fontsNext.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, three.js, GSAP, OpenNext, Cloudflare Workers · Inter, Jost, IBM Plex Mono and Caveat from Google Fonts

Rover Villa is an independent memorial. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA or any space agency and uses no agency logos or branding. NASA photos and models are used under NASA’s media guidelines.

05 · Use of Super Intelligence (SI)

One machine, three ways to meet it.

Images. The machine cut-outs, the Rover Villa Jr cartoon cast, the book and comic art, the home-page group picture and the art in some reels were made with an image-generation model. They are labelled as illustrations and never presented as NASA photos; every real photo is a credited NASA archive image.
Writing. SI writing tools helped draft scripts; the team checked every line against the sources.
Not SI. The idea, the story world, the accuracy rules, the facts and the outdoor activities are the team’s own. The narrators in our film are team members.