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Hawaii Volcano Observatory -- Kilauea, Hawaii
On the second day of Mars science simulations, the Marsokhod rover field team again achieved its daily goal of four hours of operations by the remote science team located at NASA Ames Research Center near San Jose, California. The weather at the Kilauea test site was perfect today, with a clear sky for most of the morning and no precipitation at any time.
The day started with the Marsokhod located in the same spot that it had reached at the end of yesterday. For those familiar with Kilauea, this was along the southwest rift zone, west of the main caldera. Despite an on-time start at 7 a.m. local time, the day started slowly because of intermittent RF communication problems between the local control center in the Hawaii Volcano Observatory tower and the rover in the field. It took several hours to track down a bad cable in the transceiver station that had been causing intermittent drop-outs in the data link to the field. Once corrected, the communication links stabilized and enabled more efficient operations than had been possible yesterday. Other improvements included an enhanced computer software interface for the scientists back at Ames, as well as an improved battery management strategy for achieving extended rover operations in the field.
Once nominal operations were established, the science team negotiated the rover through several extremely difficult maneuvers, including a 180 degree turn in a narrow crevass. Initial indications are that many of the participating scientists now believe that future rover missions should include pan-tilt camera pointing and a manipulator arm for additional close-up imaging.
After addressing the RF problems, the engineering team continued to refine the field operations and identify opportunities for improving the Marsokhod's performance. They also deployed the vehicle for the daily public demonstration at 3:30 at HVO.
Plans for tomorrow are to finish the third and final day of Mars science simulation tests. It is a good bet that the top-priority software mods needed to fully integrate the magnetic compass instrument will be finished for this phase. The arm control software remains the next priority and should be functional in time for the lunar science simulations that start on Thursday.
Even after several days of testing, local media interest remains strong. Several of the Hawaii television stations have carried news stories addressing the rover. The vehicle, along with McDonnell Douglas' Dave James, was the main feature on the first page of this morning's Hawaii Tribune-Herald. Additional outreach efforts in the near future include an on-line computer conference with members of the engineering team that is being hosted Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. local time by The Planetary Society on the GEnie network. JASON VI preparations are expected to start receiving greater atttention later this week as more members of the JASON team arrive in Kilauea.
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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)