We report on the MARS2013 mission, a 4-week Mars analog field test in the northern Sahara. Nineteen experiments were conducted by a field crew in Morocco under simulated martian surface exploration conditions, supervised by a Mission Support Center in Innsbruck, Austria. A Remote Science Support team analyzed field data in near real time, providing planning input for the management of a complex system of field assets; two advanced space suit simulators, four robotic vehicles, an emergency shelter, and a stationary sensor platform in a realistic work flow were coordinated by a Flight Control Team. A dedicated flight planning group, external control centers for rover tele-operations, and a biomedical monitoring team supported the field operations. A 10 min satellite communication delay and other limitations pertinent to human planetary surface activities were introduced. The fields of research for the experiments were geology, human factors, astrobiology, robotics, tele-science, exploration, and operations research. This paper provides an overview of the geological context and environmental conditions of the test site and the mission architecture, in particular the communication infrastructure emulating the signal travel time between Earth and Mars. We report on the operational work flows and the experiments conducted, including a deployable shelter prototype for multiple-day extravehicular activities and contingency situations.
We have developed a portable dual-wavelength laser fluorescence spectrometer as part of a multi-instrument optical probe to characterize mineral, organic, and microbial species in extreme environments. Operating at 405 and 532 nm, the instrument was originally designed for use by human explorers to produce a laser-induced fluorescence emission (L.I.F.E.) spectral database of the mineral and organic molecules found in the microbial communities of Earth's cryosphere. Recently, our team had the opportunity to explore the strengths and limitations of the instrument when it was deployed on a remote-controlled Mars analog rover. In February 2013, the instrument was deployed on board the Magma White rover platform during the MARS2013 Mars analog field mission in the Kess Kess formation near Erfoud, Morocco. During these tests, we followed tele-science work flows pertinent to Mars surface missions in a simulated spaceflight environment. We report on the L.I.F.E. instrument setup, data processing, and performance during field trials. A pilot postmission laboratory analysis determined that rock samples acquired during the field mission exhibited a fluorescence signal from the Sun-exposed side characteristic of chlorophyll a following excitation at 405 nm. A weak fluorescence response to excitation at 532 nm may have originated from another microbial photosynthetic pigment, phycoerythrin, but final assignment awaits development of a comprehensive database of mineral and organic fluorescence spectra. No chlorophyll fluorescence signal was detected from the shaded underside of the samples.
The Austrian Space Forum OeWF conducts Mars analog missions with varying location, length and complexity, which include analog astronauts using space suit simulators who conduct a variety of experiments. As well as the scientific and technological benefits gained from these missions, the Flight Plan Team (FPT) focuses on testing different planning strategies for planetary (analog) missions. As the missions tend to involve large numbers of participants worldwide and have high demands regarding experiment time and outcome, they provide a suitable training ground for activity planning and scheduling. Over the course of three missions we applied three different strategies in order to study their overall performance: real-time planning, 3-days-in-advance planning and 1-day-in-advance planning for the OeWF analog missions Dachstein 2012, MARS2013 and World Space Week 2013, respectively. For human planetary missions beyond the Moon, delays in crew-ground communications will rule out real-time planning. The described 1-day and 3-day-in-advanceplanning strategies address this difficulty. For robotic missions, decisions in critical circumstances can be postponed and no lives are at risk, whereas human planetary exploration may require short reaction times and cannot await a response. Complete preplanning is not feasible for manned missions due to their complexity. Additionally, health and safety requirements as well as feedback and interactions, e.g. regarding human-based in-situ decisions on mapping or experiment locations, make complete pre-planning not applicable. Instead, the situation requires detailed advance planning that allows for feedback for mission optimization while giving the astronauts the necessary authority and experiment knowledge to apply autonomous, instantaneous changes to the schedule where necessary. To simulate this situation, an artificial time-delay of 10 minutes in each direction was applied after an initial preparation phase for one of the three analog missions, MARS2013. The remaining two missions have no time-delay. We compare the three planning strategies -realtime, 1-day, 3-days-in-advance -and discuss their implementation together with mission specific advantages and disadvantages: real-time planning allows for instantaneous changes authorized by the Flight Director, but also leads to increased unnecessary changes. These are reduced by advance-planning. Because the request for changes in the activity schedule is restricted to 1 (3) days before, the planning process can be made smoother. However, all crew members have to first adjust to this method. A new challenge with advance planning is that the field crew has to be able to make decisions about changing the activity schedule by themselves. This applies to changes in personnel or activities for health and safety reasons or when equipment is unavailable. The decisions regarding activity changes have to be based on knowledge; this increased level of information has to be carefully prepared. If an experiment cannot be carried out and a replac...
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