Eos, Vol. 81, No. 11, March 14,2000
Students Participate in Mars Sample Return Rover Field Tests The Field Integrated Design and Operations (FIDO) Rover, a prototype vehicle designed to rehearse operations for the Mars Sample Return missions and associated Athena Rover, was put through a suite of field trials in the Silver Lake area of the Mojave Desert in April and October 1999. The trials also provided an opportunity to foster active involvement of students in rover missions using inquiry-based study An integrated team of more than two dozen high school students and their teach ers from Los Angeles, Phoenix, Ithaca, and St. Louis (LAPIS) developed and implemented their own FIDO-based rover mission that employed long-distance traverses to explore terrains and make discoveries.
allowed scientists and engineers to test both instruments and operations, remotely commanding the rover in the field and via the Internet using the Web Interface for Telescience (WITS) [Backes et al, 1997]. The first trials took place during the last two weeks in April 1999 and during October 1999 at the Silver Lake playa and the associated breakout channel area in the Mojave Desert in southern California.The trials were conducted to identify targets using imaging and infrared spectra, to traverse drill targets by defining way-points and letting the rover find its way between the designated points, and to drill cores from targeted rocks. Simulations of long traverses were also accomplished in which the rover was used to explore new terrains, making a number of measurements along the way
LAPIS team members from each city were paired with local science mentors who are part of the Athena Science Team to ensure that the LAPIS activities furthered the overall mission objectives at Silver Lake and to provide expert advice.The students learned to work as a gegraphically distributed team, developed hypotheses to test, commanded the rover via the Internet to test their hypotheses, analyzed data, and generated their own Web site and archives. Post-LAPIS assessments demonstrated that the participants gained new communica tion and information technology skills, an enhanced ability to cut across traditional disciplines to solve problems, and a greater understanding of planetary exploration and discovery Further, for some of the students, LAPIS provided the right set of experiences needed to help them define specific career goals in science, mathematics, and engineering.
Approximately 1 gigabyte of data was acquired, two rocks were cored, and the rover traversed several hundred meters (http://wufs.wustl.edu/rover).The trials also presented an opportunity to prototype an inquiry-based educational program, LAPIS, in which geographically distributed groups of students actively participated in planning and implementing part of the FIDO Rover field tri als (Figure l).Four teams of high school stu dents from the four LAPIS cities were paired with local teachers and mentors from the Athena Science Team.The teachers provided day-to-day guidance and the mentors (from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Arizona State University, Cornell University, and Washington University) provided connections to the FIDO primary mission and insight into how plane tary missions, and rover missions specifically, are planned and implemented.
FIDO the R o v e r
Students, Teachers, Mentors
PAGES 113,117
FIDO is a prototype of the Mars Sample Return rovers that will carry the integrated Athena Science Pay load [Schenker et a/., 1999; Squyres et al, 1998] .The purpose of FIDO is to simulate, using analog settings on Earth, the complex surface operations that will be imple mented during the Mars missions to find, char acterize, obtain, cache, and return samples to the ascent vehicles on the landers. Instrumentation on FIDO is designed to sim ulate the Athena Science Pay load as closely as possible. It includes a deployable mast with stereo cameras for scientific and navigation purposes (Pancam and Navcam, respectively) and an Infrared Point Spectrometer. An instru ment arm is included with a color microscopic imager and a spectrometer.The payload also contains a rock coring drill and cache system for sample acquisition and storage. Hazard avoidance cameras mounted on the rover are used to automatically avoid obstacles during traversing, and cameras mounted on the underside of the vehicle monitor arm deploy ments and drilling.The FIDO field trials
focused on field observations to track rover positions and orientations for later compari son with estimates derived from telemetry data. The St. Louis group developed the LAPIS Web site (http://wufs.wustl.edu/teamlapis) and archived all of the FIDO test data in an Exper imenter's Notebook(http://wufs/rover/experimenters_nb/ex_nb/notebook.htm).To imple ment the LAPIS activities, the students com municated with one another during biweekly teleconferences by electronic mail and through a bulletin board on the LAPIS Web site. The students used orbital and aerial image data to develop hypotheses to test during their portion of the rover mission. Specifically, the LAPIS team decided to target rover traverses and measurements in areas where recessional beach ridges were hypothesized to exist. The LAPIS mission focused on getting to these landforms from a nearby alluvial fan, traversing in gullies that cut through the beach deposits, and searching for evidence that would confirm that the landforms and materials were generated as the ancient Silver Lake receded. Using WITS from their home institutions, the Ithaca group commanded the rover during a traverse of approximately 40 m from the allu vial fan site toward the beach deposits. The Los Angeles group focused on a detailed tra verse in one of the gullies cutting through the beach deposits (Figure 2). Because of bad weather, the remaining traverses were accom plished later in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Yard, an area set aside for detailed rover tests.The St. Louis group conducted a traverse in which they worked on moving to and char acterizing a simulated gully littered with fresh water pelecypod shells using imaging and infrared spectra. Experiments in the Mars Yard were also set up for the Phoenix group, but schedule conflicts precluded teacher and stu dent participation. FIDO acquired 38 Navcam image pairs, 30 Pancam image pairs, 88 Hazcam image pairs, and 24 infrared spectra during the LAPIS
The teachers and students were selected on the basis of proposals and through discussions that demonstrated their interest and willingness to devote the necessary extracurricular time needed to understand the FIDO mis sion and to develop and implement the LAPIS portion of the mission. The LAPIS team was organized into functional working groups that simu lated the end-to-end approach used during a mission.The Ithaca group focused on planning the LAPIS portion of the FIDO mission and the Phoenix group was responsible for education and outreach. The Los Angeles group
Fig. 1. Los Angeles team members in their "mission controF presenting FIDO traverse results to middle school students during the mission.
Eos,Vol.81,No. 11, March 14,2000 place and worked to identify and solve prob lems. Several commented afterward that LAPIS was a life-changing experience for them. The teachers enjoyed the rewarding experi ence of working with motivated students in nontraditional settings, and they also learned a great deal about planetary exploration and discovery They taught mathematics and sci ence in ways that were exciting to everyone involved and provided guidance to the students as they explored issues associated with information technology and robotics. The mentors also benefitted significantly from their participation; influencing the students in a positive way led to significant personal satis faction.The mentors also gained experience to draw upon when implementing future edu cational activities associated with actual rover mission operations.
Future W o r k
Fig. 2. Emily Dean (Lansing High School, Lansing, N. Y.) acquires field measurements while Shu Sha Guan (Belmont High School, Los Angeles, Calif.) marks the location of the FIDO center wheel with a flag. JPL engineer, Terry Huntsberger, is in the background.
mission.The data were used by the students to analyze the ability of FIDO to avoid hazards (Figure 3), the extent to which roverbased images can be used to locate the rover in orbital and descent image data, and the extent to which rover data can be used with orbital and descent data to test ideas related to the geomorphology and geology of traversed terrains. Some of these analyses were conducted by LAPIS students employed at the mentor institutions during the summer of 1999.The LAPIS activities can be described as research-based and inquiry-based learning in which students, teachers, and mentors worked closely together to plan and implement a portion of the rover mission. Based on conversations and written exchanges before, during, and after the LAPIS mission, the students and teachers involved in LAPIS clearly enjoyed participating in the mission and were challenged in ways that would be difficult to simulate in classroom sit uations. Students had to identify and solve problems in which the solutions necessarily crossed normal discipline boundaries. For instance, planning traverses required knowl edge of geometry and trigonometry to deter mine locations, sizes, and shapes of terrain features, knowledge of the basic geology of the sites to determine science objectives asso ciated with the traverses, and facility with computers and the Internet to develop and send sequences to FIDO. Students needed an understanding of the basic capability of FIDO as a robotic system to develop and imple ment realistic sequences. Further, develop ment of good communication skills and the ability to work as a geographically distributed team proved crucial to mission success. Stu dents also obtained first-hand views of how planetary exploration and missions take
FIDO will be in the field a number of times over the next several years. LAPIS follow-on activities will take place, focused on getting closer to the type of student involvement expected for the Mars Sample Return Missions. Many student groups are expected to participate in future FIDO field trials. The exciting and engaging activities they experi ence will impact the career choices of a
Fig. 3. Image taken by the FIDO hazard avoidance cameras during a traverse. Near field is approximately 30 cm from the camera and the far field extends to the horizon. Note person with video camera on the horizon. In this figure FIDO was calculating a path to avoid the bushes in front of the rover. Students analyzed these data last summer to evaluate FIDO's ability to conduct hazard avoidance maneuvers.
Eos, Vol. 81, No. 11, March 14,2000 number of students.This was certainly the case with LAPIS, in that many of the partici pants expressed renewed interest in mathe matics and science and developed deep interests in robotics and information technology
Acknowledgments We thank the Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program for Grant NAG5-7830 from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Authors Raymond E.Awidson, Judd D. Bowman, Catherine D. Dunham, Robert C.Anderson, Paul Baches, Eric Baumgartner, James Bell, Steven C. Dworetzky Sheri Klug, Nathan Peck, Diane Sherman, Steven Squyres, Deana Tuttle, and Anna M. Waldron For more information, contact Raymond E. Arvidson, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences,Washington University,St. Louis, MO 63130, USA; E-mail:
[email protected].
FORUM Operational Oceanography: Shall We Dance? PAGES 115-116 With the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) currently in development, the world wide oceanographic community is on the brink of "operational oceanography which essentially means provision of "operational ocean services" where "operational" means "routine'and "ocean services" means "marine environmental information." GOOS is a joint campaign of the Intergovernmental Oceano graphic Commission, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Environmen tal Program, and the International Council for Science. GOOS will integrate expanded real time in situ and satellite observations with numerical models to form model-based infor mation products for a multiplicity of societal needs, including scientific research [Stel, 1997]. Operational oceanography has become a popular tune without a copyright but with many bandmasters.While Europeans and northeast Asians are moving ahead aggressively with GOOS activities, the United States has been hesitant, lacking in foresight, and awash in planning activities. It is time to ask,What has happened?, What is happening?, and What should happen? First, the ocean (and the ocean sciences) have become relevant to society for more than naval warfare and fisheries with the growing concern for a possible climate and global change crisis that places the global ocean at center stage. Second, the mass migra tion of the exploding human population to the coastal zone has raised the impact of anthropogenic influences on the coastal ocean to critical levels, threatening human health and the sustainability of fisheries and marine ecosystems.Third, increased scientific understanding, coupled with new observational, modeling, and information technologies, promises to make information concerning the global and coastal oceans more readily and routinely available to researchers, environ mental managers, and the public.
The dissemination of quasi-synoptic ocean information is already occurring provisionally for coastal ocean circulation [Mooers, 1999], as well as for the physical climate realm of basin scale interannual and interdecadal variability. The new questions are,"How far can this new capability be usefully extended for practical prediction?" and,"To what degree can it be extended to aphysical vari ables and ecosystem issues?"The internation al research community is moving ahead on the first question with the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment, which will build upon the results of the World Ocean Circula tion Experiment and the Tropicalv OceanGlobal Atmosphere Program. Analogous efforts are occurring in the United States to address the second question under the U.S. Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics Program, Coastal Ocean Processes Program, and National Oceanographic Partnership Program ( N O P P ) for the coastal ocean. At this stage, there is a consensus that impor tant new societal needs can only be addressed through operational oceanography, and that the technology exists to do so.That is, real-time, autonomous ocean observing system networks and data assimilative numerical models with useful accuracy are thought to be feasible. However, the existing infrastructure for produc ing operational products on a routine basis is insufficient.Thus, there is now a strong need to explore the pathways to operational oceanog raphy; the example of operational meteorology serves as a partial guide. Operational meteorology began 130 years ago in the United States [Fleming, 1996]. It has ridden the crests of the modern sensing, com putational, and telecommunications technology waves, and it has enjoyed a synergistic relationship with the explosive development of dynamical meteorology, numerical model ing, modern agriculture, and commercial and military aviation. Meteorologists have a sense of societal purpose not shared by oceanographers, in part
References Backes, P C , G. K.Tharp, and K. S.TsoJhe Web Inter face forTelescience QNnS),Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics Automat., LXIII, 411-417,1997. Schenker, PS., E.T. Baumgartner, L I. Dorsky H. Aghazarian, PG. Backes, R. A. Lindemann, M. S. Garrett, A. S. Lai, T. L. Huntsberger, R. E. Arvidson, and S. W Squyres, FIDO Rover and long-range autonomous Mars sci ence, Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XVIII: Algorithms,Techniques, and Active Vision, SPIE Proc.
3&?r,Boston,Mass.,September 1999. Squyres, S. W , et al., The Athena Mars Rover science payload, Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XXIX abstract 1101, Houstonjex., March 1998.
because many are engaged in the daily business of observing and forecasting the atmospheric weather, while others translate the forecasts into human terms through broadcast meteorology and value-added weather products. What constitutes operational oceanography? This question is perhaps best answered by listing the attributes of a generic operational ocean information system: • assembles an aggregation of real-time observations, obtained from space-borne remote sensors, land-based radars, etc., as well as conventional direct (in situ) sensing systems. (For upper ocean and coastal ocean dynamics, the meteorological real-time window of ~1 hour applies, while for climate and fisheries signals in the ocean interior a window of ~1 week may apply); • integrates numerical circulation models that assimilate observations to form analyses for nowcasts and eventually initial states for forecasts; • provides quality control of observational data sets and numerical products; • disseminates oceanic information products in real time; • solicits feedback from users; • archives observations and numerical products; • is supported by a highly educated workforce that maintains, evaluates, and upgrades the ob serving, numerical modeling,and telecommuni cation systems, and includes the skilled regional forecasters who combine "numerical guidance" with local observations and knowledge to make public "ocean weather" forecasts; • is supported by a diverse basic and applied research enterprise; • is underpinned by an extensive educational enterprise that maintains the supply of human resources for operations, research, and commercial and military applications; and • receives the support of a scientific and professional society (for example, the Ameri can Meteorological Society).The historical antecedents to "operational oceanography" are largely driven by two forces: naval warfare and fisheries science. All branches of naval warfare are sensitive to environmental variability. Likewise, strong empirical correla tions exist between interannual and decadal climate variability of water masses and circu lation and "booms and busts" in the stocks of numerous fish species.
