Moon Diver: A Discovery Mission Concept for Understanding the History of Secondary Crusts through the Exploration of a Lunar Mare Pit

Nesnas, Issa; Kerber, L.; Parness, Aaron; Kornfeld, Richard P.; Sellar, Glenn; McGarey, Patrick; Brown, Travis L.; Paton, Michael; Smith, Miles; Johnson, Andrew; Heverly, Matthew; Sawoniewicz, Jacek; Yahnker, Christopher; Pailevanian, Torkom; Sunada, Eric; Gaume, Bryant; Curtis, Aaron; Elder, C. M.; Uckert, K.; Vaquero, Mar; Cheng, Yang; Denevi, B. W.; Jozwiak, L. M.; Stickle, A. M.; Whitten, J. L.; Keszthelyi, L.; Haruyama, Junichi; Wagner, R. V.; Hayne, P. O.; Horváth, T.; Head, J. W.; Hopkins, James F.; Ricks, John; Boster, Emily

doi:10.1109/aero.2019.8741788

Cited by 24 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Future work should include many more mock missions in a wide variety of extreme terrains of Earth, such as those supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research program, to prepare for successful exploration of these terrains across our solar system. Some of these will take the form of climbing robots such as LEMUR 3 and its iceclimbing sibling, IceWorm (Curtis et al, 2018;Nash et al, 2020), whereas others will use alternative architectures such as rappelling (Nesnas et al, 2019), hopping, perching, and more. These field campaigns and the iterative design/test/fix cycles of development provide the foundation on which future extreme terrain rovers can be built.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Habitability with an Integrated Rock-Climbing Robot and Astrobiology Instrument Suite

et al. 2020

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A prototype rover carrying an astrobiology payload was developed and deployed at analog field sites to mature generalized system architectures capable of searching for biosignatures in extreme terrain across the Solar System. Specifically, the four-legged Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot (LEMUR) 3 climbing robot with microspine grippers carried three instruments: A micro-X-ray fluorescence instrument based on the Mars 2020 mission's Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry provided elemental chemistry; a deep-ultraviolet fluorescence instrument based in Mars 2020s Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals mapped organics in bacterial communities on opaque substrates; and a nearinfrared acousto-optic tunable filter-based point spectrometer identified minerals and organics in the 1.6-3.6 mm range. The rover also carried a light detection and ranging and a color camera for both science and navigation. Combined, this payload detects astrobiologically important classes of rock components (elements, minerals, and organics) in extreme terrain, which, as demonstrated in this work, can reveal a correlation between textural biosignatures and the organics or elements expected to preserve them in a habitable environment. Across >10 field tests, milestones were achieved in instrument operations, autonomous mobility in extreme terrain, and system integration that can inform future planetary science mission architectures. Contributions include (1) system-level demonstration of mock missions to the vertical exposures of Mars lava tube caves and Mars canyon walls, (2) demonstration of multi-instrument integration into a confocal arrangement with surface scanning capabilities, and (3) demonstration of automated focus stacking algorithms for improved signal-tonoise ratios and reduced operation time.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Habitability with an Integrated Rock-Climbing Robot and Astrobiology Instrument Suite

et al. 2020

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“…One possible solution is that of a repelling robot. The proposed Moondiver mission [53,54], using the Axel rover system [55][56][57], suggests using this method as a means of exploring underneath the lunar mare, using a pit in Mare Tranquillitatis, and performing the first subsurface exploration. Details of the tether are covered in a recent paper [58], but the core concept involves a lander on the surface using a tether which acts as an anchor and a means for power delivery and communications.…”

Section: Vertical Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Planetary Surface Mobility and Exploration: A Review

Thoesen

Marvi

2021

Curr Robot Rep

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Purpose of Review With the continued interest in scientific space exploration and rapid development of the commercialized space sector, there have been a wide array of exploration technologies proposed for planetary mobility. This paper aims to survey these new technologies, explain the motivations and challenges of traversing different space environments, and describe why certain approaches will be more ubiquitous. Recent Findings A continued dominance by four-and six-wheeled vehicles for lunar and Martian exploration due to reliability, simplicity, and efficiency is observed. However, there is an emergence of alternative wheeled vehicle kinematics, other legged locomotion, and flying, climbing, or hopping robots when these designs confer specific advantages. Summary The engineering maxim "form follows function" is strongly represented within the array of robotic planetary explorer designs. The limitations of an irradiated, dusty, vacuous, remote operating environment which prioritizes efficiency and robust operation often lead to small iterations on working designs because deviations from the status quo are simply not feasible or deemed too risky. Those proposed designs which do deviate have clear justifications driven by their particular environments or intended purpose. Engineers developing future planetary exploring robots for space environments may find these considerations useful.

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“…An exploration and mapping task which models moon caves exploration scenario is introduced for the simulation setting. Moon caves are attractive targets to investigate in the next decades [24], [25]. Compared with the conventional single robot exploration approaches, MAS have advantages on the capability of establishing a communication network and tolerance to unexpected contingencies for such applications.…”

Section: B Application For Exploration and Mapping Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compared with the conventional single robot exploration approaches, MAS have advantages on the capability of establishing a communication network and tolerance to unexpected contingencies for such applications. In this setting, it is assumed that a heterogeneous team of robots are brought to the bottom of the cave by a tethered mother robot [25]. Then the robots explore the bottom of the cave to construct an environment map in terms of the geometry and the spatial distribution of materials and water resources.…”

Section: B Application For Exploration and Mapping Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Routing Framework for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Teams in Exploration Tasks

Sakamoto

Bonardi

Kubota

2020

IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett.

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This paper proposes a routing framework for heterogeneous multi-robot teams in exploration tasks. The proposed framework deals with a combinatorial optimization problem and provides a new solving algorithm, for Generalized Team Orienteering Problem (GTOP). In this paper, a route optimization problem is formulated for a heterogeneous multi-robot system. A novel problem solver is also proposed based on self-organizing map. The proposed framework has a strong advantage in its scalability because the processing time is independent from the number of robots and the heterogeneity of the team. The validity of the proposed framework is evaluated in the exploration and mapping tasks by heterogeneous robot team with overlapping abilities. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed framework and how it outperforms the conventional greedy exploration scheme.

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Moon Diver: A Discovery Mission Concept for Understanding the History of Secondary Crusts through the Exploration of a Lunar Mare Pit

Cited by 24 publications

References 30 publications

Investigating Habitability with an Integrated Rock-Climbing Robot and Astrobiology Instrument Suite

Investigating Habitability with an Integrated Rock-Climbing Robot and Astrobiology Instrument Suite

Planetary Surface Mobility and Exploration: A Review

A Routing Framework for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Teams in Exploration Tasks

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