 |
 |
||
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
 |
Projects: Red Rover Goes to MarsHistory of the ProjectIt Began with a LEGO RobotLouis Friedman, Executive Director and cofounder of The Planetary Society, spoke at a teachers’ conference in 1995 about The Planetary Society’s projects to spur the development of the Mars rovers. While there, he noticed a teacher working with an educational product of the LEGO Company called Control Lab, which permitted students to build motorized devices that could be programmed and operated through an interface box wired to a computer. Friedman immediately saw it as a direct parallel to the work that The Planetary Society was doing in its international testing of Mars rovers. Friedman and another Planetary Society cofounder, Bruce Murray, had discussed in the past the idea that one day, members of the public would be able to operate remotely planetary rovers on other worlds. After returning from the conference, Friedman met with George Powell, a recent graduate of Utah State University who had worked with The Planetary Society on the Russian Mars rover development project, to brainstorm ideas for how the LEGO project could become a precursor to that dream. The idea that emerged was to create an educational software product that would allow kids to operate the LEGO rovers via the Internet. With the child at one computer and the rover connected to another in a different room or even different country, the student would be experiencing the very same challenges faced by the operators of NASA rovers: how do we explore a new world though the limited senses of a robot? Powell’s new company, Visionary Products, Inc., partnered with The Planetary Society and, through the Society, with LEGO to produce the software, called Red Rover, Red Rover. Red Rover, Red Rover sites were set up in hundreds of classrooms across the country and around the world. Red Rover, Red Rover is still marketed by LEGO Education, a joint venture between Pitsco, Inc. and the educational division of the LEGO Group. Sending the Red Rover Vision to MarsMeanwhile, NASA was considering various options for the package of instruments and experiments that would be sent to Mars aboard the 2001 Mars Surveyor lander. NASA had instituted a program called HEDS (Human Exploration and Development of Space) to bring together human and robotic goals for the exploration of Mars. They selected several HEDS experiments for flight on the 2001 mission, for example a pilot in-situ production of return rocket fuel from indigenous Mars resources and a radiation counter to determine the environmental exposure for future astronauts. In 1997, The Planetary Society proposed to NASA to use the spare Pathfinder rover, Marie Curie, as an educational experiment. Marie Curie would be remotely operated by students on Earth, in a successor to the Red Rover, Red Rover project, so the proposal was named Red Rover Goes to Mars. As a backup, if the Marie Curie rover could not be integrated into the mission, the proposal included the possibility that Red Rover Goes to Mars could do activities with the robotic arm that was planned for the lander. The project was to be funded by The Planetary Society, who would be sponsored by private companies including the LEGO Company. Red Rover Goes to Mars competed against other HEDS proposals (including a second radiation counter and a Martian greenhouse), and was selected, with Friedman as its Principal Investigator. In 1998 HEDS disappeared, and took with it all of the experiments that it had funded, including the possibility of flying the Marie Curie rover to Mars. However, because Red Rover Goes to Mars was funded by The Planetary Society and its sponsors, it survived the HEDS cutback, with strong support in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and at NASA Headquarters by Carl Pilcher in the Office of Space Science. The Planetary Society began to develop the infrastructure for Red Rover Goes to Mars. We partnered with other educational organizations and institutions around the world to set up National Centers, who hosted Red Rover, Red Rover sites to train students to participate in the Red Rover Goes to Mars program. The National Centers ran the first Red Rover Goes to Mars student contest to select a team of students, the Student Scientists who would come to Pasadena to work with the Red Rover Goes to Mars project on Mars Surveyor 2001. Keeping Hope Alive Through Mars Exploration’s Millennium DoldrumsIn December 1999, disaster struck; two spacecraft, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter, vanished upon arrival at Mars. Investigations revealed that errors had been made that had doomed the two missions, and NASA elected to postpone, and eventually canceled, the Mars Surveyor 2001 lander. Friedman began working on finding a way to keep Red Rover Goes to Mars alive as part of the next landed Mars mission, scheduled for launch in 2003. An interim plan was developed to find another mission for the Student Scientists to work on as a “Training Mission” for a group of students who would be selected later to participate in the 2003 mission. In August of 2000, NASA decided that the 2003 mission would consist of twin rovers landing on Mars -- a perfect mission for the Red Rover Goes to Mars project. The LEGO Company was a strong, loyal supporter and participant at all steps of the proposal and planning process, even when the 2001 mission was ultimately eliminated and the future was uncertain. The Red Rover Goes to Mars “Training Mission” developed into two student teams. The Student Scientists, selected in 2000, were invited to work at Malin Space Science Systems with the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor Mission to target and image the surface of Mars with the camera on board the Mars Global Surveyor. Their goal was to search for suitable landing sites for the 2003 lander, then one of the top science priorities for Mars Global Surveyor. The Student Navigators would work at JPL on a training program with a robotic rover. The nine Student Scientists were selected in October of 2000. They were: Zsofia Bodo, age 15, Hungary; Kimberly DeRose, 13, USA; Bernadett Gaal, 14, Hungary; Shaleen Harlalka, 15, India; Iuri Jasper, 12, Brazil; Hsin-Liu Kao, 11, Taiwan; Tanmay Khirwadkar, 13, India; Wojciech Lukasik, 10, Poland; and Vikas Sarangadhara, 10, India. The eight Student Navigators were selected in February of 2001. Contest rules permitted students to enter both phases of the Red Rover Goes to Mars Training Mission, so two of the Student Navigators were second-time winners. The Student Navigators were: Paul Bonato, age 17, Australia; Avinash Chandrashekar, 12, India; Kimberly DeRose, 15, the United States; Shaleen Harlalka, 17, India; Jacqueline Hayes, 17, Australia; Daniel Hermanowicz, 11, Poland; Kevin Hou, 13, United States; and Bhushan Mahadik, 15, India. The Student Scientists traveled to the Malin Space Science Systems in March 2001. In one of the three images of Mars they took using Mars Global Surveyor’s Mars Orbiter Camera, they discovered a strange boulder field for which planetary scientists still have no explanation. The Student Navigators traveled to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in February 2002. While there, they participated in a simulation of a Mars rover mission with the Field Integrated Design and Operations (FIDO) rover. FIDO was the same rover that would be used later that year by the Mars Exploration Rover science and engineering teams to work through their first simulations of landed operations on Mars. FIDO was remotely operated on a large-scale simulated Mars terrain at JPL, which the Student Navigator team explored through the robot’s cameras and instruments. Remote operations took place over wireless communications from a distinct JPL location from which the rover could not be seen by the Student Navigator team, mimicking the Mars Exploration Rovers’ future missions. In the meantime, 2001 Mars Odyssey successfully entered orbit at Mars on October 24, 2001, demonstrating that NASA could achieve a successful arrival at Mars after the disasters of 1999. Red Rover Goes to Mars Finds a Place on the Mars Exploration Rover MissionFriedman traveled to a meeting of the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover science team to present Red Rover Goes to Mars as an educational experiment. The Mars Exploration Rover science team was also in fact a refugee from the cancellation of the 2001 lander, so it was reasonable for Red Rover Goes to Mars to come along. The Planetary Society eventually submitted a formal proposal for Red Rover Goes to Mars to become part of the Mars Exploration Rovers. By 2002, Red Rover Goes to Mars was selected as a full-fledged component of the Mars Exploration Rover mission, and an agreement was developed between The Planetary Society and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who built and operated the Mars Exploration Rovers. The DVD hardware would be sent to Mars aboard each of the rovers (actually, bolted to the landers that would protect the rovers during their landing on Mars). As one of the mission success criteria, each Mars Exploration Rover was required to return to Earth a photo of its DVD sitting on Mars. And a third international group of students, known as the Student Astronauts, would be permitted inside Mars Exploration Rover mission operations to work with the mission’s science team. Red Rover Goes to Mars was breaking new ground in two ways. It represented only the second privately contributed hardware on a U. S. planetary mission. (The first was The Planetary Society's Mars Microphone on the failed Mars Polar Lander.) And it marked the first time that international students have had the opportunity to directly compete for the chance to work in mission operations during a robotic planetary exploration mission. The Student Astronaut contest was announced in October 2002 at the annual World Space Congress in Houston, Texas. Additionally, in 2002 NASA invited proposals from private companies to run a naming contest for the two Mars Exploration Rovers. The Planetary Society had had past experience running such contests, including the naming of Mars Pathfinder’s rover Sojourner and the Venus orbiter Magellan. The LEGO Company decided to submit a proposal with The Planetary Society as a partner. LEGO’s proposal was selected, and LEGO and The Planetary Society announced the “Name the Rovers” contest in November 2002. Meanwhile, the development of the DVD progressed from plans to hardware. The DVD assembly had to go through the same expensive testing as any other rover instrument, including violent shaking and shocks. It also had to withstand bake-outs at high temperatures that are part of NASA’s planetary protection requirements. These bake-outs are intended to kill any tiny critters on the spacecraft so we don’t “forward contaminate” Mars with life when we’re looking for signs of life. A normal plastic DVD wouldn’t survive, so we used a silica glass mini-DVD, on which the French company Plasmon specially etched the data: four million names of people around the world collected by NASA’s “Send Your Name to Mars” project, as well as the names of all of The Planetary Society’s members. The original DVD design changed several times to accommodate the violent shocks and bake-out. Visionary Products, Inc. built the DVD assemblies for us and produced the reams of documentation required by JPL for every item of spacecraft hardware. The final design incorporated the "Astrobot" LEGO mini-figure representation in the middle, magnets to collect dust, colors to study color appearance under a Martian sky, LEGO brick representations to engage kids, and secret codes around the outside to be decoded from images on Mars. The final, flight-qualified DVD assemblies and engineering models were delivered to JPL in January of 2003. Another contest was held inviting names for the two Astrobots. As Visionary Products, Inc. wrapped up development of the DVD assembly, The Planetary Society asked them to develop a new version of Red Rover, Red Rover that would permit anyone with Internet access to remotely drive one of the LEGO rovers. (The original Red Rover, Red Rover software requires both rover host and remote driver to own copies of the proprietary software.) This new software would be run from an international network of “Mars Stations,” which would be designed to look like specific locations on Mars. As the Mars Exploration Rovers explored the Red Planet, visitors on the World Wide Web could explore the Mars Stations. Launch and CruiseAt a media event on June 7, 2003, prior to the launch of the first Mars Exploration Rover, NASA unveiled the winning names selected in the “Name the Rover” contest. “Spirit” and “Opportunity” were submitted by 9-year-old Sofi Collis, who was present for the launch. Also present for the launch were the newly-named Astrobots, Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust, whose names were submitted by contest winner Cindy Rossetto. “Astrobot Diaries” from Biff and Sandy, written by Planetary Society Director of Projects Bruce Betts, were posted on The Planetary Society’s website each day. The Astrobot Diaries contained many facts about the rovers, the plans for the mission, and Mars. At the same time, the first four Mars Stations were opened to Internet visitors. After a few scrubbed launch attempts, Spirit, the first of the two rovers, launched successfully on June 10. Opportunity followed on July 7. With the launches successful and two rovers actually on their way to Mars, The Planetary Society selected the final Red Rover Goes to Mars student team, the Student Astronauts, and began training them even before they were announced to the world. In the post-September 11 United States, the international students had to go through a series of strict security checks before JPL could legally permit them to enter Mars Exploration Rover mission operations. In November 2003, the winners were announced. The Student Astronauts were: Saatvik Agarwal, age 14, India; Shih-Han Chen, 17, Taiwan; Cheng-Tao Chung, 13, Taiwan; Janice deBerg, 15, USA; Susini de Silva, 17, Sri Lanka; Courtney Dressing, 15, USA; Abigail Fraeman, 16, USA; Maciej Hermanowicz, 16, Poland; Tomas Kogan, 14, Spain; Nomathemba Kontyo, 15, South Africa; Wei Lin Tan, 14, Singapore; Rafael Morozowski, 16, Brazil; Vignan Pattamatta, 14, India; Kristyn Rodzinyak, 16, Canada; David Turczi, 15, Hungary; and Camillia Zedan, 16, United Kingdom. Red Rover Finally Goes to MarsStudent Astronaut training wrapped up in December 2003. In order to maintain a student presence over a lengthy portion of the Mars Exploration Rover mission, it was decided to have the Student Astronauts travel to JPL in pairs for one-week tours of duty, after which each would be replaced by another pair. Courtney and Rafael arrived in Pasadena on December 30, and were present at JPL for the nail-biting landing of Spirit at Gusev Crater. Would Spirit survive the landing, or go the way of Mars Polar Lander? Courtney and Rafael documented the tension in daily online journal entries, as did Astrobots Biff and Sandy. To everyone’s relief, on January 3, 2004, Spirit not only landed successfully, but landed upright and returned images to Earth within four hours. The next day, Spirit returned the promised images of the DVD, proving that the assemblies had survived the rigors of launch, cruise, and landing intact. The Planetary Society announced a new contest, inviting people to “Crack the Code for a Secret Message from Mars!” Courtney and Rafael participated in a JPL press conference releasing the first images of the DVD as well as the MarsDial to the world. The following week, Student Astronauts Tomas and Susini were present for Spirit’s first drive off the lander and on to Martian soil. Opportunity landed on January 21, with four Student Astronauts present: Abigail, Shih-Han, Wei Lin, and Vignan. Pictures of the second DVD were returned the following day, and another code-breaking contest began. The Student Astronauts continued to rotate in and out of mission operations, documenting their experiences and processing and posting images and animations of the MarsDials. Their journals provided Web visitors from around the world a unique viewpoint on life inside the operations of an active Mars mission. The last pair of Student Astronauts, Nomathemba and Camillia, finished their work at JPL on February 27. The FutureAlthough the student projects are now over, Mars Stations are still active. The Mars Exploration Rovers lasted long past their warranted lifetimes of 90 Martian days apiece. Each rover captured several images of the DVDs before leaving their landers behind and rolling off across the Martian landscape. The DVDs will remain on the landers as a time capsule for a future generation. |
|||||
 |
 |
|||||
[ what is this? ]