Outpost Robotic Technologies for Lunar Surface Prospecting and Processing
- Paper number
IAC-07-A5.2.01
- Author
Dr. Brian Glass, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Ames Research Center, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Kristopher Lee, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Johnson Space Center, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Howard Cannon, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Ames Research Center, United States
- Coauthor
Prof. Sathya Hanagud, United States
- Coauthor
Mrs. Sarah Huffman, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Ames Research Center, United States
- Year
2007
- Abstract
An affordable and sustainable space presence will require that future explorers live off of the land, in the sense of using local in-situ resources to supplement those brought from Earth. Future human crews arriving at lunar or Mars outposts may depend on a prepositioned supply of locally-generated oxygen or propellant. However, planetary prospecting and excavation will require drilling, sampling and bulk materials handling under very rugged conditions, when communications with Earth may be time-lagged or only periodic. Subsequent oxygen production equipment using local resources likewise must be able to operate untended and with some degree of autonomy. These activities must also operate under the conditions likely to be found on other planetary surfaces – wide temperature extremes, very low ambient pressures, and a lack of power compared to typical Earth-based equipment. These will add difficulty to drilling and material excavation and increase the likelihood of getting jammed or stuck. Our approach proposes to combine in-situ automation with middleware technologies that have been demonstrated in instrument integration -- these allow spacecraft components to be brought on and offline without uploading new patches or sequences. This mitigates the risk of adverse interactions between given sets of onboard instruments, processing subsystems, and spacecraft components. Integrating the command, control, and data from complex networks of heterogeneous instruments, components, agents and human operators requires a modular, plug-and-play architecture. NASA developed several vehicle integrated health management and self-checkout software tools and sensor and data acquisition packages for use in new launch vehicle and crew vehicle programs. These technologies have been used for instrument and component hands-off field tests in drilling and material handling at lunar-and Mars-analog sites. Future outpost hands-off oxygen production will require the same built-in health management ability for autonomous operations. This architecture has been demonstrated in several successful project field tests to support the dynamic addition of and deactivation of components and instruments without requiring recoding or patching. This paper will also describes some of these latest field test results from the Drilling Automation for Mars Exploration (DAME) project, including 2006 test results from automated drilling at an Arctic impact crater analog site. The current drill automation architecture, that has been developed and tested in 2004-06 at analog sites in the Canadian Arctic and Spain, will add downhole diagnosis of different strata, bit wear detection, and dynamic replanning capabilities when unexpected failures or drilling conditions are discovered. These adaptations due to discovered or encountered material conditions are necessary for automated material excavation as well. ). Future outpost hands-off oxygen production will require the same built-in health management ability, but prototypes are currently immature. But waiting until oxygen production hardware is designed and tested before looking at the self-maintenance, health and control issues creates risks that there will not be the right sensors or data acquisition in place – the prototype may then have to be redesigned or modified to support autonomous operations. Including oxygen production plant requirements for automation, data and sensor placements will reduce the risk of later design changes and outpost program
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-A5.2.01.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.