The BASALT Research Program: Designing and Developing Mission Elements in Support of Human Scientific Exploration of Mars

Abstract

The articles associated with this Special Collection focus on the NASA BASALT (Biologic Analog Science Associated with Lava Terrains) Research Program, which aims at answering the question, “How do we support and enable scientific exploration during human Mars missions?” To answer this the BASALT team conducted scientific field studies under simulated Mars mission conditions to both broaden our understanding of the habitability potential of basalt-rich terrains on Mars and examine the effects of science on current Mars mission concepts of operations. This article provides an overview of the BASALT research project, from the science, to the operational concepts that were tested and developed, to the technical capabilities that supported all elements of the team's research. Further, this article introduces the 12 articles that are included in this Special Collection.

A Flexible Telecommunication Architecture for Human Planetary Exploration Based on the BASALT Science-Driven Mars Analog

“…The resulting architecture is shown in Fig. 3, which was adapted from the work of Lim et al (2019) to illustrate each architectural component and support subsequent discussion.…”

“…In the planning phase of the BASALT program, the hardware and software teams considered how simulation conditions, such as time delay, would be implemented (see Lim et al, 2019, for more detail). The Earth-side element on the network was the control room, or MSC, for the mission, where science and operations support staff were located.…”

“…T he BASALT (Biologic Analog Science Associated with Lava Terrains) research program includes a unique mix of scientists, engineers, and experts from both human spaceflight mission operations and deep space robotic exploration, working together to meet a variety of research objectives. The team worked collaboratively to explore and conduct planetary science research at two terrestrial volcanic environments that have scientific analog applications to understanding the habitability potential of Mars (Hughes et al, 2018;Lim et al, 2019). The In-Field (in the field) scientific activities of the BASALT program were performed In-Sim (in simulation) , that is, under simulated Mars mission conditions, which included Mars-to-Earth telecommunication latencies and bandwidth limitations.…”

“…Extravehicular crew members were located in the field executing science exploration and sampling tasks. Intravehicular crew members, located in the simulated rover or habitat, guided the EV crew members and communicated with the Earth-side Mission Support Center (MSC) (Beaton et al 2019a;Lim et al, 2019). For the BASALT simulations, IV crew members were located in an isolated room of the MSC and operated on ''Mars time.''…”

“…For a more detailed account of the history and applications of analog field tests with regard to the development of a telecommunication architecture for future human and robotic spaceflight, see the work of the companion paper by Seibert et al (2019). Finally, this paper presents a utilization analysis of the BASALT telecommunication infrastructure for the BASALT-1 (Idaho 2016) and BASALT-2 (Hawai'i 2016) field deployments (described in Lim et al, 2019) and summarizes the data demands imposed on the architecture.…”