Lansing High School Students Drive Mars Robot Vehicle
Ron Baalke
Cornell University
Contact: David Brand
Office: (607) 255-3651
E-Mail: de...@cornell.edu
FOR RELEASE: April 29, 1999
Lansing High School becomes a NASA control center as Cornell-guided students
drive Mars robot vehicle
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Students at Lansing High School, just north of Ithaca, are
participating in the first field test of a robot vehicle that will explore the
surface of Mars in the early years of the new century.
Since April 19 the vehicle, known as FIDO (for Field Integrated Design and
Operations Rover), has been undergoing field tests around an ancient lake
bed in the Mojave desert in southern California, with scientists operating
the controls from a desert command center. The vehicle is a prototype for
NASA's 2003 and 2005 Mars missions. On Wednesday, high school students
from Lansing, St. Louis, Phoenix and Los Angeles took over the controls as
an integrated mission team and began commanding FIDO directly from their
schools.
The students are responsible for planning, conducting and archiving the
two-day FIDO mission. The Lansing students, who are mission controllers,
have been working since February to master the complex software required
to operate the rover, under the guidance of enrichment teacher Anna Waldron,
Cornell assistant professor of astronomy Jim Bell, and coordinator of
astronomy education/outreach at Cornell Diane Sherman.
During the tense two days of driving, each team of students has a three-hour
shift to "uplink" its command sequences to the rover through an Internet
software package called WITS, for Web Interface for Telescience, developed
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Teacher Waldron's 15 Lansing students, ranging from ninth- to 12th- graders,
have spent the last three months working after school to develop a mission
plan that will determine where the vehicle will travel in the bleak desert
test site, and which instruments it will use to make specific measurements
at points along the way.
The Mojave site was chosen because it is a relatively arid region with an
interesting geologic past that indicates the abundant presence of water,
simulating a potential landing site on Mars. The students have developed an
ambitious plan for FIDO to traverse and explore a gully, acquiring remote
sensing data on the geology and possible biology of this water-carved
feature.
NASA has assigned the four high school teams the tasks of developing the
mission plan, planning the data-archiving procedure, and planning education
and outreach activities associated with the FIDO tests. The students expect
to produce and distribute a CD-ROM containing educational activities based
on the field test, as well as personal entries and experiences from the
mission logs and data collected during the mission.
The rover mission "has been a wonderful learning experience for these
students," says Sherman. "They have learned to work together as a team
using their math, science, and geography skills. I believe it has also given
the students a first-hand look at how planetary science is done, that things
don't always work the first time, and that creative troubleshooting is
critical to the success of the mission."
FIDO is about the size of a coffee table and weighs about the same as a St.
Bernard dog, about 70 kilograms (150 pounds). It is approximately 85
centimeters (about 33 inches) wide, 105 centimeters (41 inches) long, and
55 centimeters (22 inches) high. The rover moves up to 300 meters an hour
(less than a mile per hour) over smooth terrain, using its onboard stereo
vision systems to detect and avoid obstacles. During these tests, FIDO
is powered by both solar panels that cover the top of the rover and by
replaceable, rechargeable batteries.
FIDO is designed to be a rock-retriever, because future robotic rovers on
Mars will need to find the best rocks to bring back to Earth -- samples that
are likely to contain the evidence scientists need to determine if life once
existed on the red planet. The vehicle carries instruments similar to those
that will be part of the Athena payload on the 2003 and 2005 sample-return
missions. The Athena Project is organized by Cornell University under the
leadership of principal investigator and Cornell astronomy professor Steven
Squyres.
The students have had to become familiar with these instruments, which
include an infrared spectrometer and four separate camera systems for
navigation, hazard-avoidance, high-resolution science imaging, and "belly"
imaging -- looking straight down.
They also have had to understand FIDO's engineering constraints: How fast
and how far from the lander it can travel, and what kinds of obstacles can
hang it up. And they have become familiar with the geology of Mars and the
Mojave, integrating their planned route and measurements into NASA's goals
for the future exploration of Mars.
"This project has given high school students an opportunity to plan and
implement a space science mission with the help of leading scientists
in the field," says Waldron. "Students have experienced every facet of a
mission, including the frustrations and failed plans that go along with
exploration. It has been an amazing experience for them and for me as I've
watched them work together as a team to create a real scientific mission."
The Lansing students were invited to Cornell in early April to participate
in a practice run of the mission, during which many of the techniques they
will use for their mission plan were ironed out.
The project has been designed to maximize the students' scientific,
engineering, and hands-on computational experience, notes Bell. He adds
that the experience also has provided the students with an introduction
to state-of-the-art NASA planetary exploration technology as well as
interactions with and mentoring from scientists who will be involved
with the real Mars missions in just a few years.
As for the actual testing of the rover vehicle in the Mojave, "we've had a
fantastic week," says Squyres. "In just a few days, we've shown that we can
find good rocks, drill samples out of them, and take the samples back to a
lander. That's a huge step forward in preparing to bring the first samples
back from Mars."
The Lansing High School students in the mission are:
George Salloum
David Metzger
Josh Stevens
Kim Schuttenberg
Taqui Raza
Kyri Murdough
Melissa McClure
Allison Bishop
J.P.Shulman
Dana Elmquist
Eric Losey
Mike Ducharme
Tim Morrell
Greg LiVigne
The 15th team member, sophomore Emily Dean, was chosen by the students
to represent Lansing High School at the Mojave test site as a guest of NASA.
Related World Wide Web sites:
The following sites provide additional information on this news release.
Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell
has no control over their content or availability.
FIDO
http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/tasks/etrover/homepage.html
FIDO student mission
http://wufs.wustl.edu/teamlapis/
Lansing High School FIDO team
http://www.lansingschools.org/LHS/fido.htm
Athena
http://athena.cornell.edu
JPL/Mars
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov
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IMAGE CAPTION: [http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/April99/LansingGroup
jpg]
Taqui Raza, J. P. Shulman and Melissa McClure, students in the Lansing
High School enrichment program, examine images from the FIDO Mars
Rover prototype on a computer in their classroom, as teacher Anna Waldron
watches. Cornell News Service digital photo.
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