By Tony Fitzpatrick
NASA plans to send two robotic rovers to Mars in 2004, and Washington University is involved in an impressive network of researchers and students to help make the mission possible.
Raymond E. Arvidson, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of the earth and planetary sciences department in Arts & Sciences, his staff and students across the nation have been active in field testing the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) prototype for two years. Arvidson, who has worked for NASA since 1970 and has had a role in almost every Mars mission since the 1970s, is Deputy Principal Investigator for the Athena Science Payload on the two MER rovers that will land on Mars in early 2004. The Principal Investigator is Steven Squyres, Ph.D., professor of astronomy at Cornell University.
 Pictured above is a simulated image of the Mars rover carrying NASA's Athena Science Payload. Washington University is heavily involved in testing prototype rovers and in the Athena Science Payload scheduled to reach the "Red Planet" in 2004. High school students nationwide, as well as a group of students in Copenhagen, Denmark, also are collaborating with NASA. |
The MER prototype has the fetching name of FIDO (Field Integrated Design and Operations Rover). Arvidson, his staff and science colleagues also included in the field tests dozens of high school students participating in a NASA-sponsored project called LAPIS. The students helped put FIDO through its paces in the Silver Lake area of the Mojave Desert in April and October of 1999 and in Nevada in May of 2000. LAPIS stands for Los Angeles, Phoenix, Ithaca (N.Y.) and St. Louis, cities where high school students are paired with local science mentors who are part of the Athena Science Payload. These students helped with the FIDO mission in 1999 testing Rover prototypes.
LAPIS-2 students from Flagstaff, Ariz., Birmingham, Ala., Ithaca, St. Louis and Copenhagen, Denmark, helped with the 2000 tests. The students learned to work as a geographically distributed team, developed a LAPIS Web site, and used telecommunications and e-mail to develop testable hypotheses, command the rover over the Internet and analyze and archive data. The idea is to provide young people with insight into how planetary missions and rover missions specifically are planned and carried out.
Arvidson has multiple roles with the Athena mission. As Deputy Principal Investigator, he serves as a sort of vice president to Squyres. Arvidson is the leader of field trial rehearsals and will oversee archiving the data from the actual 2003 Athena Science Payload at the Planetary Data Systems Geosciences Node, located at the University. He is the director of the LAPIS program, and he is leading the development of physical properties experiments to be conducted by the rovers on Mars. Arvidson also is an interdisciplinary scientist for data and archives for the mission.
"We think of LAPIS as a way to get students actively involved with planning missions," said Arvidson. "We're encouraging young students to see how NASA works and feel a sense of participation in a major science project. It's not designed to convince them to become geologists or planetary scientists. We just want them to have an excellent interactive experience."
Arvidson said that the FIDO trials are performed to make sure that the MER vehicles will be able to accomplish the tasks NASA has set for it.
"FIDO is trying to mimic what a human field geologist would do," he said. "The group of instruments we're testing is particularly powerful in characterizing the terrain and minerals present, especially in relation to aqueous minerals that may have formed in rivers, lakes or seas."
The Athena payload consists of stereo cameras on a mast for terrain characterization and physical properties analysis. An emission spectrometer will measure the heat emitted from the surface of the atmosphere over many wavelengths. An instrument arm has four instruments --a color microscopic imager, alpha proton X-ray, Moessbauer spectrometers and a rock abrasion tool. Hazard-avoidance cameras mounted on the rover help it avoid obstacles in its quest.
"We have a lot to rehearse in terms of getting these instruments to operate effectively," said Arvidson.
NASA has trials with FIDO every few months. Field trials performed in the spring of 1999 with LAPIS participation yielded approximately one gigabyte of data and the rover traversed nearly two miles. More success followed in the spring of 2000 and a third field trial that includes LAPIS-3 students is scheduled for May 2001.
Emily Dean, a senior at Lansing High School in Lansing, Mich., was part of the Lansing LAPIS team her sophomore and junior years. Her team created a mission plan for FIDO, which included researching the terrain, developing mission goals and understanding the rover's limitations. While her team controlled the rover through the Internet from her school, she was in the Mojave Desert in southern California taking measurements and making general observations for the team.
"During my experience in the field, I had several opportunities to talk to the engineers, geologists and scientists working on the project and ask them any questions that I or my team had thought of," said Dean, who is considering coming to the University as a student in the fall. "Just standing in the midst of such amazing people working on such an amazing project was absolutely overwhelming. I felt so lucky to be a part of the project. I felt that I was a part of NASA. I am still grateful to them for opening their doors to me and my team.
"LAPIS taught me a lot. It gave me the opportunity to learn about everything from the details of the Mars program to the instruments on the rover. My team and I gained experience in creating solutions to spontaneous problems. We also got the chance to learn a little about the careers of the scientists. Overall, the experience was incredible and I'd do it again in a second."
In all, the MER vehicles are expected to cover together more than two kilometers of the Martian surface for between 90 and 180 Martian days, or sols. A sol is just 39 minutes longer than an Earth day.
Both Mars rovers currently are planned for launch on Delta II rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The first mission is targeted for May 22, 2001, with the second launch slated for June 4. After a seven-and-a-half month cruise, the first rover should enter Mars' atmosphere Jan. 2, 2004, with the second rover bouncing to a stop on the Martian surface Jan. 20.
The rovers will reach Mars in a lander with airbags. The MER vehicles will be sophisticated descendants of the popular, highly successful 1997 Sojourner rover, though much larger and vastly improved.
"The MER vehicles will carry much more than Sojourner and will do more sophisticated science," Arvidson said. "It will be one of the most exciting Mars missions because we will actually have two different rovers searching different areas of the Martian surface, and we should have exciting discoveries about Mars that we would not be able to find in other ways."
