How can future missions to the Red Planet propel a new age in space exploration?
Mars has been a key interest for scientists for decades. Being our neighbor, possibility of liquid water on its surface, and having fairly similar atmospheric conditions like Earth, it does sounds like a viable option for being another hospitable planet. This is why we have numerous space missions to Mars to look for signs of life. It started with a flyby in 1965 to quickly evolving into remote explorations from multiple countries. Each mission has given astronomers more information about the planet’s geology and habitability potential. Recently researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Eindhoven University of Technology have introduced a three-agent robotic system that could further enhance the future Mars explorations. This system is composed of a Mars conventional ground rover, a helicopter, and an orbiter. This mission’s main objective is to test the feasibility of operating the copter on the red planet.
According to the research paper, published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, if successful, the mission could pave the way toward other missions involving the deployment of Mars copters, which may produce more information about the ground, terrain, and obstacles ahead of the rovers. This system’s primary task is to identify an optimal path for the ground rover, which minimizes the localization uncertainty that accumulates as the rover moves in a given direction. The researchers found that the localization performance can be increased by selectively driving over types of terrain that are easy to localize (i.e., that have good localizability).
In their research, the team used a localizability map captured by remote satellite technology to carry out a space search that combines the rover’s path with the copter’s actions to gather rich data about the surrounding environment. Additionally, the system considers the dynamic map updates collected by the copter. This is necessary for copter and rover to address where to map and drive, respectively, for minimizing the uncertainty accumulation in rover localization. Further, copter’s ability includes the ability to observe and map regions of the planet in 3D. The paper authors have also mentioned that the copter’s high-resolution data would aid the rover in locating small hazards such as steps and pointy rocks, as well as providing rich textual information useful to predict perception performance. The lower the altitude, the more accurate the observation is. After each measurement and observation, the satellite map is updated for the rover to use as it moves forward. Notably, the uncertainty the rover could face due to undiscovered territory decreases as the number of images captured by the copter increases, thereby enabling a smooth mission.
As per the latest findings, the team has observed the system’s appreciable effectiveness in a series of numerical simulations, including both single-run and Monte Carlo simulations. These simulations were based on the map of the Mars 2020 mission landing site. They were explicitly designed to evaluate the planner’s effectiveness in reducing localization uncertainty when exploring Mars via a three-agent robotic system.
They concluded that adopting this approach reduces localization uncertainty during rover path planning by 10 to 20%. One the other hand, a random mapping approach gave less than a 10% gain in uncertainty reduction. In the future, their system could help optimize the use of copters to enhance rover navigation during Mars exploration missions by considering the rover’s actions and copter in conjunction.
Other Martian projects include the European Space Agency and Roscosmos planning to launch a rover named for chemist Rosalind Franklin, whose contribution helped decipher the DNA structure. The rover will drill into the Martian soil to hunt for signs of past and present life. Meanwhile, China’s Tianwen-1 aims to be the first Mars mission to drop a landing platform and deploy a rover. The rover will be equipped with a radar device that can detect water and ice beneath the surface, as well as a laser to track rock compositions.
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