Do not forget that windstorm from “The Martian”?
Mars drone and rover prototypes present process testing in Iceland this summer time needed to endure a gusty atmosphere considerably akin to the fictional storm within the 2016 film.
“I’ve by no means seen such loopy winds in my life,” planetary geologist Catherine Neish, an affiliate professor at Canada’s Western College, informed House.com. “Drones can not fly in excessive wind situations, and on this case, it was so excessive we did not need individuals on the market both,” Neish stated, noting that the storm was close to hurricane situations.Â
The storm wasn’t something one would see on the Crimson Planet, regardless of the creative license from “The Martian.” However the scenario confirmed how robots and people alike might endure robust situations, Neish stated, and that is essential preparation to get drones and rovers working along with human helpers on the moon, Mars and different rocky worlds.
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Iceland has already emerged as a super spot to perform analog missions that goal to copy the situations, as carefully as attainable, that astronauts would face on deep-space missions. The island boasts quite a lot of habitats that resemble extraterrestrial locales, together with lava flows, glaciers and mountains. Furthermore, Iceland is a comparatively small nation, so researchers can entry many forms of terrain in a brief tour.
Throughout this summer time’s mission, Neish’s workforce explored a central Iceland lava movement that erupted round late 2014 or early 2015. Whereas Mars has no energetic volcanism that we all know of, the advantage of a contemporary analog web site is it has not eroded a lot; Martian erosion is comparatively gradual in comparison with Earth‘s, Neish defined.
“We have got this contemporary floor being coated over; we additionally see lots of dust and sand on Mars, getting blown round and deposited on the lava flows,” Neish stated. “Then close by [our site], there’s really a glacier. There’s lots of ice on Mars as properly, so it actually is an ideal Mars analog.”
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LiDAR scan of our #RAVEN base camp in Iceland, with our new @PhoenixLiDAR backpack system. You possibly can see our tents, tables, solar panels, and even the rocks lining the paths! pic.twitter.com/pchFZVMwgrJuly 29, 2022
Referred to as the Rover-Aerial Car Exploration Community (RAVEN) area examine, people and robots alike explored the Holuhraun lava movement utilizing a prototype drone constructed by Honeybee Robotics and outfitted with a pattern acquisition system. That work may be helpful for NASA‘s goals to retrieve Martian samples with drones, just like the Ingenuity helicopter from the Perseverance rover mission.
Additionally on web site was the Mars Exploration Science Rover (MERS) from the Canadian House Company, and drones from the College of Arizona, in addition to personnel from Canada’s MDA (which operates the Canadarm robotic arms on the Worldwide House Station) and Reykjavik College in Iceland.
Throughout this tour, the challenge’s first, the workforce aimed to function the rovers and drones individually with distant assist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, which runs actual rover missions on Mars, together with Perseverance and Curiosity.
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JPL engineers, Neish defined, would ship instructions over the web. Then operations groups on web site would provide you with a plan primarily based on the instructions.Â
“JPL had sure science objectives in thoughts, after which there can be an implementation workforce that will exit within the area with the rover or the drone and implement instructions they got by the operations workforce,” Neish stated.Â
The groups are nonetheless analyzing knowledge about their Iceland excursions. Extra analysis papers could also be popping out shortly regarding what they discovered. Within the meantime, Neish and her collaborators are planning one other go to in 2023.
At the moment, the scientists hope that rovers and drones will be capable of work extra immediately collectively — and beneath extra favorable winds.Â
Comply with Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).Â
