Marsokhod Planetary Rover Status Report

14 January 1995

Written by John Garvey

Despite the extensive rains here in California, the Ames/MDA/Lavochkin rover team was able to get in five hours of Marsokhod driving time outside on the McDonnell Douglas grounds, as well as about four hours inside the Robotics Lab during the past week. The emphasis has been on checking out the new rover avionics, wiring and on-board control software for the wheels. In parallel, work has continued on the remote teleoperations control software and integrating the manipulator into the VME computer architecture.

As noted in the previous status report, the decision was made to go ahead with several rover structural mods during the next week. In particuar, the manipulator arm was shipped to MDA-Houston on 12 January for welds that will increase the strength of the joints. Additionally, MDA will anodize several exposed aluminum components such as the mast and instrument platforms early next week to provide protection against corrosion while at Kilauea. These tasks should be completed by the Thursday, so that by 20 January, the rover will be in its final configuation for the JASON tests. In parallel, the software folks will continue to refine the network communications and control program(s).

While this activity was under way in Huntington Beach, several members of the science and engineering team(s) visited the field site to support preparations for the rover shipment early next month. Jeff Taylor (Pele Principal Investigator) and Ron Greeley (Univ. of Arizona) surveyed the numerous sites and obtained a set of aerial photographs via helicopter, while Dave Burnett and Dave James (both from MDA-HB) refined logistic plans through a number of meetings and discussions with local JASON supporters. The following is the latest schedule of key Ames/MDA milestones for the upcoming field tests:

January

21 - 25.......... continue check-out testing
26 - 27.......... communications architecture testing
31.......... Mars Day demonstration at JPL

February

6 .......... planning meeting (Kilauea)
6 - 9.......... ship rover to field site
10 - 12.......... set-up and check-out tests
13 - 15.......... Mars-type field tests
16 - 18.......... lunar-type field tests
20.......... public outreach day
23.......... begin JASON live demonstrations

For those interested in additional information about these upcoming tests, we will start putting out bulletins on the Internet's sci.space.news newsgroup. MDA is also planning to create a directory (Rovers (?)) on the McDonnell Douglas - Houston WWW home page by 18 January. The address will be:

http://pat.mdc.com

Additionally, the NASA Ames Intelligent Mechanisms Group home page will be automatically uploading all images and data to its Home Page upon recipt from the test site. It can be reached at:

http://maas-neotek.arc.nasa.gov

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