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The first open-word game from the galaxy far, far away feels like the Han Solo simulator we've been waiting for.

Image Credit: BitGrit

The Digital Information Platform (DIP) Sub-Project of Air Traffic Management – eXploration (ATM-X) is seeking to make available in the National Airspace System a variety of live data feeds and services built on that data. The goal is to allow external partners to build advanced, data-driven services using this data and to make these services available to flight operators, who will use these capabilities to save fuel and avoid delays. Different wind directions, weather conditions at or near the airport, inoperative runway, etc., affects the runway configurations to be used and impacts the overall arrival throughputs. Knowing the arrival runway and its congestion level ahead of time will enable aviation operators to perform better flight planning and improve the flight efficiency. This competition seeks to make better predictions of runway throughputs using machine learning or other techniques. This competition engages students, faculty members, and other individuals employed by United States universities to develop a machine learning model that provides a short-term forecast of estimated airport runway throughput using simulated real-time information from historical NAS and weather forecast data, as well as other factors such as meteorological conditions, airport runway configuration, and airspace congestion.

Award: $120,000 in total prizes

Open Date: September 13, 2024

Close Date: December 8, 2024

For more information, visit: https://bitgrit.net/competition/23

Feeding bees edible bits of hydrogel increases their odds of surviving pesticide exposure by 30 per cent

Feeding bees edible bits of hydrogel increases their odds of surviving pesticide exposure by 30 per cent

4 Min Read NASA’s Artemis II Crew Uses Iceland Terrain for Lunar Training

Credits:
NASA/Trevor Graff/Robert Markowitz

Black and gray sediment stretches as far as the eye can see. Boulders sit on top of ground devoid of vegetation. Humans appear almost miniature in scale against a swath of shadowy mountains. At first glance, it seems a perfect scene from an excursion on the Moon’s surface … except the people are in hiking gear, not spacesuits.

Iceland has served as a lunar stand-in for training NASA astronauts since the days of the Apollo missions, and this summer the Artemis II crew took its place in that long history. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, along with their backups, NASA astronaut Andre Douglas and CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons, joined geology experts for field training on the Nordic island.

NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch stands in the desolate landscape of Iceland during a geology field training course. NASA/Robert Markowitz NASA/Robert Markowitz

“Apollo astronauts said Iceland was one of the most lunar-like training locations that they went to in their training,” said Cindy Evans, Artemis geology training lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It has lunar-like planetary processes – in this case, volcanism. It has the landscape; it looks like the Moon. And it has the scale of features astronauts will both be observing and exploring on the Moon.”

Iceland’s geology, like the Moon’s, includes rocks called basalts and breccias. Basalts are dark, fine-grained, iron-rich rocks that form when volcanic magma cools and crystalizes quickly. In Iceland, basalt lavas form from volcanoes and deep fissures. On the Moon, basalts can form from both volcanoes and lava pooling in impact basins. Breccias are angular fragments of rock that are fused together to create new rocks. In Iceland, volcanic breccias are formed from explosive volcanic eruptions and on the Moon, impact breccias are formed from meteoroids impacting the lunar surface.

Apollo astronauts said Iceland was one of the most lunar-like training locations that they went to in their training.

Cindy Evans

Artemis Geology Training Lead

Along with exploring the geology of Iceland, the astronauts practiced navigation and expeditionary skills to prepare them for living and working together, and gave feedback to instructors, who used this as an opportunity to hone their instruction and identify sites for future Artemis crew training. They also put tools to the test, learning to use hammers, scoops, and chisels to collect rock samples.

Caption: The Artemis II crew, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and backup crew members NASA astronaut Andre Douglas and CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons trek across the Icelandic landscape during their field geology training. NASA/Robert Markowitz

“The tools we used during the Apollo missions haven’t changed that much for what we’re planning for the Artemis missions,” said Trevor Graff, exploration geologist and the hardware and testing lead on the Artemis science team at NASA Johnson. “Traditionally, a geologist goes out with just standard tool sets of things like rock hammers and scoops or shovels to sample the world around them, both on the surface and subsurface.”

The Artemis tools have a bit of a twist from traditional terrestrial geology tools, though. Engineers must take into consideration limited mass availability during launch, how easy it is to use a tool while wearing pressurized gloves, and how to ensure the pristine nature of the lunar samples is preserved for study back on Earth.

There’s really transformational science that we can learn by getting boots back on the Moon, getting samples back, and being able to do field geology with trained astronauts on the surface.

Angela Garcia

Exploration Geologist and Artemis II Science Officer

Caption: Angela Garcia, Artemis II science officer and exploration geologist, demonstrates how to use a rock hammer and chisel to dislodge a rock sample from a large boulder during the Artemis II field geology training in Iceland. NASA/Robert Markowitz

“There’s really transformational science that we can learn by getting boots back on the Moon, getting samples back, and being able to do field geology with trained astronauts on the surface,” said Angela Garcia, exploration geologist and an Artemis II science officer at NASA Johnson.

The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under Artemis and will pave the way to land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon on future missions. The crew will travel approximately 4,600 miles beyond the far side of the Moon. While the Artemis II astronauts will not land on the surface of the Moon, the geology fundamentals they develop during field training will be critical to meeting the science objectives of their mission.

These objectives include visually studying a list of surface features, such as craters, from orbit. Astronauts will snap photos of the features, and describe their color, reflectivity, and texture — details that can reveal their geologic history.

The Artemis II crew astronauts, their backups, and the geology training field team pose in a valley in Iceland’s Vatnajökull national park. From front left: Angela Garcia, Jacob Richardson, Cindy Evans, Jenni Gibbons, Jacki Mahaffey, back row from left: Jeremy Hansen, John Ramsey, Reid Wiseman, Ron Spencer, Scott Wray, Kelsey Young, Patrick Whelley, Christina Koch, Andre Douglas, Jacki Kagey, Victor Glover, Rick Rochelle (NOLS), Trevor Graff.

“Having humans hold the camera during a lunar pass and describe what they’re seeing in language that scientists can understand is a boon for science,” said Kelsey Young, lunar science lead for Artemis II and Artemis II science officer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “In large part, that’s what we’re training astronauts to do when we take them to these Moon-like environments on Earth.”

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Last Updated

Sep 13, 2024

Related Terms

• Analog Field Testing
• Andre Douglas
• Apollo
• Artemis
• Astronauts
• Christina H. Koch
• Earth’s Moon
• G. Reid Wiseman
• Humans in Space
• Missions
• The Solar System
• Victor J. Glover

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Russia’s attack on Ukraine has delayed its launch, but the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover is heading toward completion. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2018, but technical delays prevented it. Now, after dropping Russia from the project because of their invasion, the ESA says it won’t launch before 2028.

But when it does launch and then land on Mars, it will do something no other rover has done: drill down two meters into Mars and collect samples.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover (RFR) was initially called the ExoMars Rover. ExoMars was a two-part joint mission between the ESA and Roscosmos (Russia). The first part is the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which is currently in orbit around Mars. The rover is meant to follow the orbiter and has been renamed in honour of British chemist and DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin.

The rover will land in Oxia Planum, a 3.9 billion-year-old, 200-km-wide plain that contains one of the largest regions of exposed clay-bearing rocks on the planet. Oxia Planum was initially a candidate landing site for NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which eventually landed in Jezero Crater. There’s overwhelming evidence that this region was once watery. Oxia Planum is also geologically diverse, with plains, craters, and hills, and is flat and mostly free of obstacles.

Ancient water channels flowed into Oxia Planum in Mars’ past, and it’s possible that these flows carried evidence of life with them. In that sense, the water did some of the work for the rover. Rather than have to traverse a much larger area looking for evidence of life, nature might have delivered it to Oxia Planum for the RFR to find.

The Oxia Planum landing site. Image Credit: By NASA – http://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/2014_05/14_Oxia_Thollot_webpage.pdf, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44399172

The RFR is aimed at astrobiology rather than geology, and if there’s any astrobiological evidence for it to find, it’ll be buried. The subsurface is protected from harmful radiation that could degrade evidence of life. As it moves around Oxia Planum, the RFR will use its ground-penetrating radar to study the subsurface. The radar is called WISDOM for Water Ice Subsurface Deposits Observation on Mars. Its data will be transmitted to Earth, where the ESA will create images of the subsurface, looking for ideal places to drill. Other instruments, like the Adron-RM neutron spectrometer, will help it find desirable water-rich deposits underground.

It will also discover buried obstacles that could make drilling difficult. Though the drill is robust and designed to operate in Mars’ harsh conditions, it could still be damaged.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover will map the subsurface, looking for desirable drilling sites. It can drill down as deep as two meters and collect samples. Image Credit: ESA

The RFR also has wide-angle cameras on a mast to help it investigate its surroundings and find routes. The cameras will also identify hydrothermal deposits for further investigation.

Once a drilling site is selected, the RFR will drill down to a maximum depth of two meters, collecting either a rock core or loose material. After withdrawing its drill, it will place the sample in its Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD), where a suite of instruments will examine it for both chemical and morphological evidence of past life.

The suite of instruments is called the Pasteur Payload and includes spectrometers, imagers, molecular analyzers, and other instruments.

The mission will also showcase advanced technologies. It’ll use machine learning to analyze data from its Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer(MOMA) instrument. Its PanCam (Panoramic Camera) system is an advanced system that will provide high-resolution, 3D, multispectral images of the Martian landscape. It even has a miniaturized infrared spectrometer integrated into the drill, called Ma_MISS (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies), to analyze the walls of the borehole as the drill penetrates the surface.

The RFR will have solar panels, but it’ll also be powered by an Americium power unit called a radioisotope heater unit (RHU). This is the first time Americium-241 has been used on a spacecraft, and its job is to keep the rover’s components warm in Mars’ frigid temperatures.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover will be more agile and autonomous than other rovers. It can drive over boulders as large as its wheels and should be able to safely navigate steep slopes. It also has the ability to lift its wheels if they’re stuck in sand or loose material. It can use its wheels to “walk” its way out of the sand.

The ESA deserves credit for severing its relationship with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and pivoting to complete the mission without Roscosmos’ involvement.

“The war in Ukraine has had a big impact on ExoMars. The spacecraft was ready to move to the launch campaign in Baikonur in April 2022 but was halted because of the invasion and the subsequent termination of the cooperation with Roscosmos, with whom the mission was partnered,” the ESA said in a statement in 2023. “The impact on the team and the disappointment for what happened was tangible, as a lot of effort had been spent in preparing this long-awaited mission.”

Russia was originally going to supply the launch vehicle and the landing platform for the rover. However, after Russia was ousted from the mission, the USA stepped in to provide the launch vehicle. The mission still needs a replacement landing platform, which is one of the reasons for the delayed launch. The ESA says that, unlike the original landing platform, the replacement will be simpler and won’t perform any science of its own. It won’t even have solar panels and once the rover is functioning, the platform will shut down a few days after deploying the lander.

This mission is about science, intellectual curiosity, and nature, not politics. Despite humanity’s woeful behaviour towards one another, our appetite for knowledge remains robust. Many missions suffer delays and other problems, so the RFR is in good company.

If the ESA can achieve its 2028 launch date, the RFR will arrive on Mars six to nine months later, most likely, and begin its scheduled seven-month-long mission to search for evidence of past life. Despite Russia’s bluster and terrible decisions, the mission will continue.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover is a remarkable machine. There’s still a lot of work to do, and the mission still has to land successfully, which is a daunting challenge. But if it does, it may finally provide an answer to one of our most pressing questions: Was there ever life on Mars?

The post How the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Rover Will Drill for Samples on Mars appeared first on Universe Today.

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