I'm Nate from Design Squad, and I'm here with Dylan, David, and Arun.

Our mission is to collect a sample from an asteroid.

This is our asteroid.

And this is what scientists call a core sample.

People can't travel the planets and asteroids to pick up samples yet, so NASA sends rovers and spacecraft to do it.

Those machines travel to the surface of planets and asteroids to collect the core samples.

The Curiosity Mars rover has a drill on the end of a robotic arm that it uses to collect core samples from the surface of Mars.

Studying those core samples help scientists determine what conditions were like at the beginning of our solar system five billion years ago.

These machines collect core samples from the surface of potatoes.

ARUN: We're designing a tool to collect a core sample by driving a straw into a potato slice.

We've got straws, elastics, clips, popsicle sticks, and skewers.

And cups.

NATE: There's lots of different ways to solve the problem of getting this straw into the potato.

Dylan, tell me about your core sampler.

So this one it will spin into it like a drill.

I stab this down and pull it up.

NATE: I can see it drilling in.

Oh, the straw's crumpling at the end.

DYLAN: That failed.

NATE: Crunch.

DYLAN: So I'm building one with a rubber band so it can pull up and shoot into the core.

Also this straw is stronger than the one I used before, so it won't crumple when getting pushed into the core sampler thingy.

(laughs) NATE: It's not quite reaching.

Let's take a look at what's happening here.

As you were pulling it backward... Those rubber bands were just sliding along.

If the rubber band's not holding onto the straw, we can't stretch it back and store energy.

But if you can make it stretch back and store energy, you can release it and punch the core right in.

Yeah.

Look at that, it went straight through.

One thing you did with this is you added a binder clip on the end, and that did the important thing of increasing the mass of the driver on the core sampler.

So it has a lot more force behind it to drive the core sampler into the potato.

It worked really well.

DAVID: Ow, my foot.

NATE: Awesome.

That's working pretty nicely now that you've got that rubber band on there.

NATE: All right, now let's try it with a full-size potato asteroid.

Hmm...

The skin is a little tough.

One thing to consider might be to figure out a way to add more energy to the core sampler.

So that when it's punching through, it can really get deep and get through that skin.

DAVID: We could use rubber bands to make the straw get pushed in by itself.

NATE: Nice, I like it.

You can store up some potential energy in the rubber bands, which can later be released as kinetic energy to drive that core sampler in.

Let's do it.

Okay, let's do it.

And there's the sample inside.

NATE: And now, I want to super size these core samplers to get some samples of a pumpkin.

For instructions on how to build your own core sampler, and for lots of other cool activities related to NASA missions, check out the Design Squad website.

(laughter)