Marsokhod Planetary Rover Status Report

30 January 1995

Written by John Garvey

The pace of work has remained at a high level as the Marsokhod shipment date, still set for 6 February, approaches. Tomorrow's Mars Day demonstration at JPL has also been a driving force over the weekend. Much of the attention of Hans, Dave J., Greg and Jay has been on resolving software and hardware integration issues that arose when the rover team began to integrate the manipulator, which had been at MDA-Houston for some structural enhancements. Hardware problems in several I/O modules slowed progress down, but it appears that these have been resolved as the rover performed a number of driving tests today.

The plan for the rover over the next several days is to bring it to JPL tomorrow (Tuesday, 1/31) morning, where it will be on display as part of the Mars Day demonstration in the main court yard. Upon return tomorrow evening to McDonnell Douglas facilities in Huntington Beach, the focus will turn to finishing the integration of the manipulator control software and starting preparations for the shipment to the Kilauea test site.

The other primary technical activity involves the testing of the PIN site software in conjunction with the WilTel communications network and completion of VEVI features for controlling the rover during the planetary science tests that will proceed the JASON teleoperations. The goal is to complete the PIN site software in time for the target distribution date of 6 February. MDA will provide a baseline configuration to WilTel and EDS, which in turn will load it onto the PC systems going to the participating PIN sites. As for VEVI, Butler loaded the latest version on the SGI Crimson Realty Engine workstation at MDA and it ran extremely fast. The Ames folks are now working on the real-time synthesis of topographical maps from the Marsokhod's live stereoscopic video system.

In between these software tasks, Gary Glover has managed to continue working on an independent Windows-based rover simulation that will incorporate actual images of the Kilauea test sites that Dave James and Dave Burnett took during their recent logistics preparation trip to the big island. The goal is to finish an initial version of this simulation, which uses the WorldToolKit for Windows package, shortly after the PIN site software delivery and to then make it available to interested PIN sites. There are a number of licensing issues that remain to be worked out in order for such distribution to occur, but they do not appear to be an overly-complex obstacle at this time.

As part of the outreach activities, MDA has also made contact with the curator of the JASON Home Page (the URL is http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ). The MDA rover home page and the JASON one are now linked and discussions are underway on how to organize and present the information that is going to be generated once testing begins.

On the programmatic side, numerous planning and review meetings for the NASA Ames and JASON test operations took place during the past week. Representatives from many of the key participating organizations held a status telecon on Wednesday, while members of NASA Ames flew down to MDA in Huntington Beach on Friday for a Test Readiness Review. It is expected that several more telecons will take place prior to rover shipment. These efforts have resulted in a number of planning documents that are proving to be useful in coordinating the diverse efforts of the numerous participants.

The schedule for the near-term is:

January

31 - Mars Day at JPL
- distribute agenda for the next telecon

February

1 - Mars science test review meeting at NASA Ames
- complete manipulator arm software integration
- burn on-board rover software into EEPROMs
- ship comm network test equipment back to WilTel
- conduct status telecon
- initial operation of TPS home page
2-5 - complete checkout test activities and preparations for rover shipment - finish VEVI modifications
- demonstrate dial-in capability
- hardmount Kodak VCS-420 imager and mockups of Mossbauer and EGA instruments
3 - PIN site general meeting at EDS facilities in Plano, TX
6 - deliver rover and associated equipment to shipper for delivery to Hawaii - advance team flies to Hilo
7 - organizing meeting at HVO
9 - rover and equipment arrives at Hilo
13 - start Mars simulation test operations

By the time testing starts, we will try to get a daily bulletin out which will be available on the various home pages associated with the project. As for Discovery, the latest word is still that no announcements concerning the awards are expected until at least mid-February.

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Gene Carl Feldman (gene@seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov) (301) 286-9428
Todd Carlo Viola, JASON Foundation for Education (todd@jason.org)