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Extraterrestrial Drilling and Excavation
Published in Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Kris Zacny, Advances in Extraterrestrial Drilling, 2020
Kris Zacny, Gale Paulsen, Phil Chu, Boleslaw Mellerowicz, Stephen Indyk, Justin Spring, Alex Wang, Grayson Adams, Leslie Alarid, Colin Andrew, Jameil Bailey, Ron Bergman, Dean Bergman, Jocelyn Bergman, Phil Beard, Andrew Bocklund, Natasha Bouey, Ben Bradley, Michael Buchbinder, Kathryn Bywaters, Lee Carlson, Conner Castle, Mark Chapman, Colin Chen, Paul Chow, Evan Cloninger, Patrick Corrigan, Tighe Costa, Paul Creekmore, Kiel Davis, Stella Dearing, Jack Emery, Zak Fitzgerald, Steve Ford, Sam Goldman, Barry Goldstein, Stephen Gorevan, Amelia Grossman, Ashley Hames, Nathan Heidt, Ron Hayes, Matt Heltsley, Jason Herman, Joe Hernandez, Greg Hix, Will Hovik, Robert Huddleston, Kevin Humphrey, Anchal Jain, Nathan Jensen, Marnie Johnson, Helen Jung, Robert Kancans, Cecily Keim, Sarineh Keshish, Michael Killian, Caitlin King, Isabel King, Daniel Kim, Emily Kolenbrander, Sherman Lam, Andrea Lamore, Caleb Lang, Joseph Lee, Carolyn Lee, John Lorbiecki, Kathryn Luczek, Jacob Madden, Jessica Maddin, Tibor Makai, Mike Maksymuk, Zach Mank, Richard Margulieux, Sara Martinez, Yuka Matsuyama, Andrew Maurer, Molly McCormick, Jerry Moreland, Phil Morrison, Erik Mumm, Adoni Netter, Jeff Neumeister, Tim Newbold, Joey Niehay, Phil Ng, Peter Ngo, Huey Nguyen, Tom O’Bannon, Sean O’Brien, Joey Palmowski, Aayush Parekh, Andrew Peekema, Fredrik Rehnmark, Hunter Rideout, Albert Ridilla, Alexandra Rzepiejewska, Dara Sabahi, Yoni Saltzman, Luke Sanasarian, Vishnu Sanigepalli, Emily Seto, Jeff Shasho, Sase Singh, David Smyth, Nancy Sohm, Jesus Sosa, Joey Sparta, Leo Stolov, Marta Stone, Andrew Tallaksen, Miranda Tanouye, Lisa Thomas, Thomas Thomas, Luke Thompson, Mary Tirrell, Nick Traeden, Ethan Tram, Sarah Tye, Crystal Ulloa, Dylan Van-Dyne, Robert Van Ness, Vincent Vendiola, Brian Vogel, Lillian Ware, Bobby Wei, Hunter Williams, Jack Wilson, Brian Yaggi, Bernice Yen, Sean Yoon, Ben Younes, David Yu, Michael Yu, Mike Zasadzien, Raymond Zheng, Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Mircea Badescu, Xiaoqi Bao, Tom Cwik, Jean-Pierre Fleurial, Jeffery Hall, Kevin Hand, Ben Hockman, Samuel M. Howell, Troy Lee Hudson, Shannon Jackson, Hyeong Jae Lee, Michael Malaska, Brandon Metz, Scott Moreland, Avi Okon, Tyler Okamoto, Dario Riccobono, Kris Sherrill, Stewart Sherrit, Miles Smith, Jurgen Mueller, Wayne Zimmerman, Michael Amato, Melissa Trainer, Don Wegel, Andrej Grubisic, Walter F. Smith, Ralph Lorenz, Elizabeth Turtle, Hirotaka Sawada, Hiroki Kato, Yasutaka Satou, Takashi Kubota, Masaki Fujimoto, Pietro Baglioni, Stephen Durrant, Richard Fisackerly, Roland Trautner, Marek Banaszkiewicz, Karol Seweryn, Akihiro Fujiwara, Taro Nakamura, Matthias Grott, Jerzy Grygorczuk, Bartosz Kędziora, Łukasz Wiśniewski, Tomasz Kuciński, Gordon Wasilewski, Seiichi Nagihara, Rohit Bhartia, Hiroyuki Kawamoto, Julius Rix, Robert Mulvaney, Andrea Rusconi, Christian Panza, Marco Peruzzotti, Pablo Sobron, Ryan Timoney, Kevin Worrall, Patrick Harkness, Naohiro Uyama, Hiroshi Kanamori, Shigeru Aoki, Dale Winebrenner, Yasuyuki Yamada, Tilman Spohn, Christian Krause, Torben Wippermann, Roy Lichtenheldt
The Curiosity Rover completed its prime mission in the first Martian year, 669 Sols (687 Earth days) on June 24, 2014. In that time the rover successfully drilled three full-depth drill holes into the Martian surface and analyzed the recovered material using onboard instruments, giving us new insights into the potential habitability of ancient Mars. These drill targets are known as “John Klein” (Sol 182) and “Cumberland” (Sol 279), which lie in the mudstones of the Yellowknife Bay formation, and “Windjana” (Sol 621), which lies in the sandstones of the Kimberley formation. The graphs in Figure 1.154 show the sample acquisition data for the full and mini-drill operation on the targets. Please see Abbey et al. (2019) for additional details about the drill performance. Figure 1.155 shows the holes drilled through August of 2019.
UHF Micro-Transceiver Development Project
Published in John D. Cressler, H. Alan Mantooth, Extreme Environment Electronics, 2017
In January 2004, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) landed two vehicles, Spirit and Opportunity, on the surface of the planet Mars. These Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) sent back massive quantities of data and photographs over the following years. Subsequent surface missions have included the Phoenix lander which explored the polar region geology and climate in 2008, and the Mars Science Laboratory rover (Curiosity), launched at the end of 2011. While providing stunning data and views of our neighboring planet, these missions all employed vehicles supporting large electronic bays with significant power requirements and hence substantial mass and volume. The electronic bays themselves are often referred to as “warm electronic boxes” since they are configured to keep both batteries and electronic components above the range of temperatures specified for operation of industrial/military electronics.
Introduction
Published in Xiaorui Zhu, Youngshik Kim, Mark Andrew Minor, Chunxin Qiu, Autonomous Mobile Robots in Unknown Outdoor Environments, 2017
Xiaorui Zhu, Youngshik Kim, Mark Andrew Minor, Chunxin Qiu
Planetary exploration was the earliest application of outdoor mobile robots. The typical robotic rover was Curiosity, which was launched in 2011. It was designed for exploring Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory [2], Figure 1.1. Curiosity had six wheels: two middle wheels went straight, and the corner wheels were omnidirectional. Since the rover might cross rugged terrain, the rocker-bogie design of the chassis was invented to allow the rover to keep all of its wheels even on an uneven surface. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) stated that this rocker-bogie system had reduced the motion of the main rover body by half compared to other suspension systems. The Curiosity was also equipped with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to support safe traverses. Autonomy of Curiosity was kept low because of the special circumstances of space exploration, in which most activities, such as taking pictures, driving, and operating the instruments, would be performed under commands from the flight team.
State-of-the-art review of energy harvesting applications by using thermoelectric generators
Published in Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, 2023
Babak Safaei, Sertan Erdem, Mohammad Karimzadeh Kolamroudi, Samaneh Arman
Last but not least, Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity launched in 2011 and powered by one MMRTG which had around 115 W of power at the beginning of mission and the mission is still proceeding [165, 171]. It should be noted that all of the RTGs and MMRTG listed in Table 7 were not only generators which used Pb-Te alloy as TE element and the first successful use of specific RTG in the history. Plenty of other space crafts, such as Nimbus 3 and Pioneer 11, used same RTGs with the ones are listed in this article [165]. As a result of these RTGs, the mission durations of space crafts were elongated. Moreover, invention and application of RTGs enabled human kind to spend more time in the space and paved the way to further discoveries. Gusev et al. [172] claimed that TEMs with n-type legs are manufactured by Bi-Te-Se and p-type legs are manufactured by lead-doped Bi-Sb-Te alloys at hot-side and cold-side temperatures of 198 °C and 25 °C, respectively, can output 10.1 W of thermal power whereas 0.426 W of electric power, means overall efficiency of TEG is around 4.3%. As further applications, lots of space missions are performed, and also are being performed, with the help of ceramic based TEGs as well as Skutteride materials since the hot-side temperature of those TEMs are a lot higher than metal-based semiconductors.
Recent research and development activities on space robotics and AI
Published in Advanced Robotics, 2021
Richard Doyle, Takashi Kubota, Martin Picard, Bernd Sommer, Hiroshi Ueno, Gianfranco Visentin, Richard Volpe
The NASA/JPL Robotics group is directly participating in a set of exciting flight projects, primarily dedicated to Mars exploration. First, JPL has promoted two active rover missions in operation on the surface: Mars Exploration Rover (MER) ‘Opportunity’ [16] and Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) ‘Curiosity’ [17]. JPL Robotics personnel participated in the design and construction of both of these rovers, including software for control and operation. Lesson learned from Opportunity informed the development of Curiosity, but unique challenges have also been addressed for it. Some of these challenges and solutions for Curiosity have been the incorporation of variable drive modes that employ features such as visual odometry [18] or global path planning at the discretion of the operators; a new algorithm for improving traction control and reducing unexpected wheel wear [19]; and new operations modes for carrying soil samples while driving or self-inspection of the vehicle.
Energy-aware trajectory planning for planetary rovers
Published in Advanced Robotics, 2021
From the power aspect, the Mars rovers are either powered by solar array panels (SAP) or radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG). Since Curiosity is a rover with a stable power supply from the RTG, it was commanded to drive with four path-selection mode and two drive motor control strategies without much consideration to the energy management [1]. While Curiosity and Perseverance are equipped with RTG, Sample Fetch Rover is equipped with SAP. Here, solving a design trade-off between the weight of power source (RTG or SAP) relative to the total weight of the rover and the amount of power available from the source, the RTG is favorable for large rovers ( e.g. 45 for 1025 kg Perseverance), while SAP is for small (light weighted) rovers. Furthermore, in light of the fact that future rovers are likely to collaborate with humans, SAP is favorable. The amount of power generated by an SAP is difficult to adjust, and therefore the operation of the rover itself will be limited in order to achieve long-term operation. The solar powered Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) were operated where the rover's local path and schedule are manually planned in order to arrive at a region where plenty of sunshine could be available. The global path was also chosen considering power consumption, while it was planned with the idea of reaching a place with good sunlight conditions, such as sun-facing slopes, before the Martian winter settling in.