NASA Team Demonstrates Robot Technology For Moon Exploration
- From: baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 23:12:22 -0800 (PST)
Feb. 27, 2008
Stephanie Schierholz
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-4997/1272
stephanie.schierholz@xxxxxxxx
Katherine K. Martin
Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
216-433-2406
katherine.martin@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Brandi Dean
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-244-1403
brandi.k.dean@xxxxxxxx
RELEASE: 08-067
NASA TEAM DEMONSTRATES ROBOT TECHNOLOGY FOR MOON EXPLORATION
CLEVELAND - During the 3rd Space Exploration Conference Feb. 26-28 in
Denver, NASA will exhibit a robot rover equipped with a drill
designed to find water and oxygen-rich soil on the moon.
"Resources are the key to sustainable outposts on the moon and Mars,"
said Bill Larson, deputy manager of the In-Situ Resource Utilization
(ISRU) project. "It's too expensive to bring everything from Earth.
This is the first step toward understanding the potential for lunar
resources and developing the knowledge needed to extract them
economically."
The engineering challenge was daunting. A robot rover designed for
prospecting within lunar craters has to operate in continual darkness
at extremely cold temperatures with little power. The moon has
one-sixth the gravity of Earth, so a lightweight rover will have a
difficult job resisting drilling forces and remaining stable. Lunar
soil, known as regolith, is abrasive and compact, so if a drill
strikes ice, it likely will have the consistency of concrete.
Meeting these challenges in one system took ingenuity and teamwork.
Engineers demonstrated a drill capable of digging samples of regolith
in Pittsburgh last December. The demonstration used a laser light
camera to select a site for drilling then commanded the four-wheeled
rover to lower the drill and collect three-foot samples of soil and
rock.
"These are tasks that have never been done and are really difficult
to
do on the moon," said John Caruso, demonstration integration lead for
ISRU and Human Robotics Systems at NASA's Glenn Research Center in
Cleveland.
In 2008, the team plans to equip the rover with ISRU's Regolith and
Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction
experiment, known as RESOLVE. Led by engineers at NASA's Kennedy
Space Center, Fla., the RESOLVE experiment package will add the
ability to crush a regolith sample into small, uniform pieces and
heat them.
The process will release gases deposited on the moon's surface during
billions of years of exposure to the solar wind and bombardment by
asteroids and comets. Hydrogen is used to draw oxygen out of iron
oxides in the regolith to form water. The water then can be
electrolyzed to split it back into pure hydrogen and oxygen, a
process tested earlier this year by engineers at NASA's Johnson Space
Center in Houston.
"We're taking hardware from two different technology programs within
NASA and combining them to demonstrate a capability that might be
used on the moon," said Gerald Sanders, manager of the ISRU project.
"And even if the exact technologies are not used on the moon, the
lessons learned and the relationships formed will influence the next
generation of hardware."
Engineers participated in the ground-based rover concept
demonstration
from four NASA centers, the Canadian Space Agency, the Northern
Centre for Advanced Technology in Sudbury, Ontario, and Carnegie
Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh.
Carnegie Mellon was responsible for the robot's design and testing,
and the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology built the drilling
system. Glenn contributed the rover's power management system. NASA's
Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., built a system that
navigates the rover in the dark. The Canadian Space Agency funded a
Neptec camera that builds three-dimensional images of terrain using
laser light.
All the elements together represent a collaboration of the Human
Robotic Systems and ISRU projects at Johnson. These projects are part
of the Exploration Technology Development Program, which is managed
by NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
To view images of the rover in development, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/lunar_truck.html
For more information about NASA's exploration plans to the moon and
beyond, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration
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