Remote Controlled Rover for EuroGeoMoonMars MDRS Campaign.
- Paper ID
6044
- author
- company
Airbus DS GmbH; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Ames Research Center; Carnegie Mellon University
- country
Germany
- year
2010
- abstract
The goal of the EuroGeoMoonMars mission (from 24 January to 28 February 2009) was to demonstrate instruments from ExoGeoLab pilot project [1], support the interpretation of ongoing Moon and Mars missions, validate a procedure for surface in-situ and return science, and study human performance aspects [2,3]. We used a remote controlled rover on loan from the Carnegie Mellon University to support surface reconnaissance and in-situ operations. Rover Tests at EuroGeoMoonMars MDRS: We validated the use of the rover and evaluate its implementation as a tech requirement for remote controlled reconnaissance from the Habitat prior to EVA as well as in situ EVA support. The Rover was first tested and deployed during a technical phase. The next phase of the validation process focussed on setting up a high quality live video stream transmitted from the rover to mission control in the Hab. We set up an optimized transceiver link capable of communicating wirelessly with the rover not only in the vicinity of the Hab but also over a significant distance for realistic recon mission simulation. After this Phase, Crew 76 was able to perform several missions including a solo night mission. Both phases have given invaluable insight with regards to using rovers for in situ EVA support, and as reconnaissance capability prior to initiating EVAs to remote destinations. Other valuable information in-cludes the deployment and operational requirements such as mechanical interfaces, computing power, battery life, transmission delays and so forth). References: [1] Foing, B.H. et al . (2009) LPI, 40, 2567. [2] Foing, B.H., Pletser, V., Boche-Sauvan L. et al , Daily reports from MDRS (crew 76 and 77) on http://desert.marssociety.org/mdrs/fs08/. [3] Foing, B.H. et al. (2009) ESLAB 2009 abstr., 84. Co-authors: J. Hendrikse(1)*, B.H. Foing(1)*, J. Zavaleta(2)*, F. Selch(12,2), E. Monaghan(1)*, C. Stoker(2)*, P. Ehrenfreund(10), L. Wendt(8)*, C. Gross(8)*, C. Thiel(9)*, S. Peters(1,6)*, A. Borst(1,6)*, P. Sarrazin(2)*, D. Blake(2), L. Boche-Sauvan(1)*, J. Page(1,4), V. Pletser(5)*, P. Mahapatra(1)* , D. Wills(1)*, C. McKay(2) , G. Davies(6), W. van Westrenen(6), P. Poulakis(4), G. Visentin(4), A. Noroozi(3), E. Gill(3), M. Guglielmi(4), M. Freire(4), R. Walker(7), ExoGeoLab team(1,4) & EuroGeoMars team(1,4,5); 1)ESTEC/SRE-S Postbus 299, 2200 AG Noordwijk, NL, 2)NASA Ames Research Center, 3)Delft TU, 4)ESTEC TEC Technology Dir., 5)ESTEC HSF Human Spaceflight, 6)VU Amsterdam, 7)ESTEC Education Office, 8)FU Berlin, 9)Max Planck Goettingen, 10)Leiden/GWU, 11)HE-Space Bremen, 12)Carnegie Mellon U., * EuroGeoMars crew