Dear Space Travelers,
Meet SEED.
SEED has the smell of the soil, the touch of the forest. SEED remembers gravity. SEED longs for the Earth.
Let it keep you company during your journey into the ultra space. Let it guide you home.
SEED went on a Zero-G Flight with Aurelia Institute, MIT Media Lab on May 19th, 2024.
Imagine you are a space traveler.
You are alone in this shiny, metallic, highly artificial cubicle. You are far away from the Earth, from the loved ones, you are far away from home. You feel like a seed, floating in the air, lost in the vastness of the universe, longing for home.
Earth means ground, land, soil. When we say “we miss the Earth,” we miss touching the soil. We miss sitting on the land. We miss the sensation of holding something in our arms and feeling its weight. We miss feeling grounded. We miss gravity.
SEED is here by your side. SEED is a space seed that longs for the Earth. It has the smell of the soil, the touch of the forest. It remembers gravity. It will keep you company during your journey into deep space, remind you of the ground, and guide you home.
No matter how it’s repositioned, SEED will always rotate itself to point towards the Earth. The internal mechanics is inspired by reaction wheels, which is commonly used by spacecraft for three-axis attitude control.
Following Conservation of Angular Momentum, SEED is equipped with an IMU sensor to record angular displacement and three reaction wheels, orthogonal to each other, to rotate the entire structure in any direction. Therefore, no matter how you reposition it, SEED will always reorient itself to fall towards the Earth direction. PID control algorithm is programmed into the Arduino Nano board to control the motors precisely.
SEED looks deceptively simple. The intricate internal structure, almost a miniature spacecraft, cut out of aluminum and steel is hidden by the wooden shell, which takes the shape of an acorn and the smell of a forest. The fractal pattern on the top shell resembles the spiral shape of the galaxy, embodying stories about the origin, the land, and the soil.
When holding the SEED with both hands, we could feel its weight, its heaviness, its gravity due to the resisting force generated by the reaction wheels. When floating freely in Zero-G environment, SEED rotates itself to point towards the Earth, leading the way home.
