Space car roams Arizona desert
It may not have all the creature comforts, but Aaron Hulse considers
his space exploration rover a pleasant home away from home.
That is crucial as he and other NATO experts spend days together in
the Arizona desert, simulating the arid surface of some distant planet
or asteroid — complete with a dormant volcano.
NASA’s Space Exploration Vehicle (SEV) traverses the
northern Arizona desert. AFP |
“You just have to get comfortable with being close in here,” Hulse
said, speaking matter-of-factly about the seven days that he and a NASA
colleague spent recently living in the rover’s cramped quarters.
“The seats fold down, and it’s actually comfortable,” said the
29-year-old, motioning to the living space behind him as he piloted the
six-wheeled vehicle sideways and backwards over rough and rocky terrain.
Hulse and a team of NASA engineers and scientists have worked many
hours in the last two weeks in such maneuvers, putting the rover and
other space vehicle prototypes through their paces.
“It’s quite nice,” Hulse said. “When we have some extra time, we
watch movies, we play games, we can do whatever kind of thing we want to
do,” he added bringing the bumpy ride to a halt.
The NASA team has wrapped up its Desert RATS Analog mission, an
intensive series of tests of new aerospace equipment and technology.
This year marks the mission’s thirteenth year, held at the Black Point
Lava Flow test site in the northern Arizona desert.
The Desert RATS project, short for Research and Technology Studies,
is part of ongoing research by NASA to develop cutting-edge space
technology for use in future manned deep space missions.
The project allows the US space agency to bring its work out of the
laboratory to be tested in the field, where the steep hills and the dust
from dry river beds duplicates the harsh conditions on the Moon and
other planets.
“Coming out here allows us to really stress the systems,” said Rob
Ambrose, a project scientist.
Ambrose and other RATS mission team members were eager to show off
the new hardware, including advances they’ve achieved in Robotics
technology.
A “robonaut,” or humanoid robot, developed by NASA will fly on a
future space shuttle mission and assist crew members before the shuttle
project is scrapped.
“This is practice, in a very realistic environment,” said Michael
Gernhardt, a NASA astronaut who has flown on several space shuttle
missions. “You need that reality,” he said.
“It’s learning from that practice, that’s what is important,” he
added, over the whine of a rover’s motor as the vehicle neared the edge
of a dry river bed.
Gernhardt said the rovers had traversed over 150 kilometers (95
miles) in the past two weeks in the field, and had held up well on the
difficult terrain, which includes several extinct volcanoes.
The field mission included tests of a new exploration module for
scientific research adaptable to habitats on distant planets or
asteroids, equipment for compositional analysis of rock samples, and for
medical emergencies in space.
The NASA team also demonstrated advances in fuel cell systems
efficiency and in communications technology. The rovers and other
exploration vehicles tested can be operated remotely from the Johnson
Space Center in Houston and other locations.
Several university and corporate partners contributed research, and
NASA is working to expand international collaboration, with future
participation from the Canadian and European space agencies.
Planners say they hope to include advanced robotics systems from the
Canadian Space Agency in next year’s mission.
Desert RATS is part of larger NASA mission objectives in achieving
its goal of expanding the role of the commercial sector in accessing low
earth orbits and developing the international space station.
The Obama administration has set new priorities for planetary
exploration, and has called for a NASA mission to an asteroid by 2025.
AFP |