Parallel Investigation and Phoenix as an Analogue for Sample Return

The Operational Structure The Operational Concept used for the Phoenix Mars Lander [5] was adapted as a basis for our process. Over the course of our preparation, changes were made to suit the level of staffing at mission control of 10-20 volunteers and the relatively low amount of training (compared to flight missions)

that could be provided. Thus, a structure was developed which played to the existing strengths of the team.

Mission operations design for lunar sample return as field-tested in an analogue deployment

to the Sudbury impact structure John E. Moores(1), Raymond Francis(1), Marianne Mader(1), G.R. Osinski(1)

and the ILSR Team: T. Barfoot(2), N. Barry(1), G. Basic(2), M. Battler(1), M. Beauchamp(1), S. Blain(1), M. Bondy(5), R-D. Capitan(1), A. Chanou(1), J. Clayton(1), E. Cloutis(4), M. Daly(3), C. Dickinson(5), H. Dong(2), R. Flemming(1), P. Furgale(2), J. Gammel(2), N. Gharfoor(5), M. Hussein(6), R. Grieve(1), H Henrys(1), P. Jaziobedski(5), A. Lambert(2), K. Leung(2), C. Marion(1),

E. McCullough(1), C. McManus(2), C.D. Neish(7), H.K. Ng(5), A. Ozaruk(1), A. Pickersgill(1), L.J. Preston(1), D. Redman(9), H. Sapers(1), B. Shankar(1), A. Singleton(1), K. Souders(8), B. Stenning(2), P. Stooke(1), P. Sylvester(8), L. Tornabene(1)

(1) (2)

(4) (3) (5) (6) (7) (9) (8)

Background Image: The ROC-6 Rover stands

perched atop a cliff face with an expansive view of the

terrain

Abstract A Mission Operations Design is described for an analogue robotic sample return

mission on the far side of the Moon in the South Pole-Aitken Basin. The analogous site was within the Sudbury Impact Structure. This scenario will use a rover acting alone supported by a single relay spacecraft. The structure established and tested

will offer lessons for improving decision making and reducing training time across all similar planetary space missions, including private lunar missions.

References [1] Squyres et al., (2011) Visions and

Voyages.[2] Barfoot et al. (2010) P&SS doi:

10.1016/j.pss.2009.09.021[3] Beckman, M.

(2006) Proceedings of the 29th AAS G&C

Conference Abstract AAS-07-057[4] Yingst et

al., (2011) 42 ndLPSC Abstract 1891[5] Phoenix Project

Operations Concept (2007) JPL Document

D-27908. [6] Fong et al., (2009) IAC-09.A5.2.-B3.6.7[7] Lim et al.,

(2011) GSA (accepted) [8] Arvidson, R. E., et al. (2009), Results from the

Mars Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm

experiment, J. Geophys. Res., 114, E00E02,

doi:10.1029/2009JE003408.

Introduction and Background Scenario Description The Planetary Decadal Survey has ranked sample return from the South Pole-Aitken basin on the lunar far side as high-priority under the New Frontiers program [1]. As well, there are several dozen private companies who are vying for the Google Lunar X-Prize that will carry out science and exploration objectives on the Moon. As such,

we will report on a science-driven Analogue Mission using the UTIAS ROC-6 Rover [2] to investigate a site within the Sudbury Impact Structure in June, 2011. A remote

mission control room was employed in London, ON.

The scenario is centred around an exploring/caching rover which would characterize its landing site and select the best geological samples for return based upon their

science potential. A single mapping orbiter assumed to have a 2-hour orbital period similar to the LRO qualification orbit [3] would support this rover (Fig 1). It is this 2-hour cadence that drives the design of mission. Each command cycle requires two

hours to complete with uplink to the field at the start and downlink from the field at the end of the first hour in the middle of each command cycle.

Figure 1 (left): Cartoon of the communications scheme being tested with a

rover at the South Pole-Aitken Basin and Mission Control on Earth

Figure 2 (Above): Structure of Sudbury Mission Control showing

assigned roles and processes (BLUE). Each process has a leader

who reports to a leadership council whose ultimate decision authority lies with the Mission

Manager. This top-down structure is in contrast to more traditional

structures (GREY) in which all stakeholders from across the mission are present in large meetings. By focusing each

process and giving latitude to each process leader a more

flexible structure was created. Buy-in was achieved by each

process sequentially rather than all at once.

We have divided up mission control into four separate, yet linked,

processes (Fig 2) with each, in turn, contributing to the final product of

each 2-hour cycle (Fig 3).

First, Science Processing takes in downlinked data and converts it into science data products. Next, Science

Processing works with Science Interpretation to update a list of

desired specific prioritized future observations that respond to the

new data products and is in keeping with Science Interpretation’s Long

Term Plan for the mission. Next, the Planning process takes the

prioritized science objectives and balances these against the available resources and rover capabilities to create a schedule of observations

and traverses which are uploaded to the field.

During this whole sequence, the

Mission Evaluation and Facilitation Process fosters inter-process and inter-shift communications and understanding by organizing the

data that comes in, recording the decisions made at

meetings of each process and maintaining a wiki of reference material available to the entire

group. Again, this cycle is shown schematically in Fig. 3.

Figure 3 (Below): This figure describes how each process interacts. The 2-hour cycle showing the flow of data and information at Mission

Control and in the Field.

The Phoenix Mission represents an excellent analogue to a mission where samples must be delivered to a central, non-

mobile ascent vehicle. The reason for this is that the rover, like the Phoenix Robotic Arm, is ultimately fixed to a stationary

geographic point. As such, this affords the rover the ability to return to examine outcrops and other sites of interest in parallel

instead of one at a time. This benefits the tested investigation scheme which proceeds from Large Scale to Small Scale. If many sites are under consideration there can be a down-selection at each scale of the investigation. This gives confidence that not

only will the samples selected be appropriate, but that they will represent the best samples from the area under investigation by

the rover.

Enabling this scheme is the teach-and-repeat capability of the ROC-6 Rover. For the rover, like the Phoenix Robotic Arm, it was time intensive to visit new areas and there was uncertainty in

terms of positioning. But once a new area had been added to the overall network, it was quick, easy and reliable to return. As

such, the site at Sudbury was explored in three major steps: (1) exploration and network building (2) Identification of sites of

interest with return and medium-range analysis and finally (3) close-in analysis and sampling (if appropriate).

Figure 6: A diagram of the Phoenix Workspace

from [8] is inset within a false-colour image of the

Rover network from Sudbury. Many of the

Phoenix sites (Inset) were investigated in parallel. A

similar tactic was used with the network of sites

encountered by the ROC-6 in Sudbury. Note how in

both diagrams, all sites of interest radiate from a

single point. For Sudbury, these points lie along a branching network and

for Phoenix they are radial to the RA origin.

(The eye is aided by a shaded wedge that has

been superimposed)

Conclusions and Lessons Learned: (1) Dividing up responsibilities between small, focused groups did not result in degradation of performance vs. one large decision-making team

(2) The use of these groups: (a) Allows the science team to focus more on science and less on operations, improving understanding of the field site. (b) Gives flexibility to the process. (c) Reduced the learning curve of new personnel, allowing more contributions earlier.

(3) Investigating sites in a parallel manner is a good strategy for identifying the best materials for a sample-return mission through down-selection. A rover with a branching-path traversing structure is the ideal platform from which to carry out a parallel investigation.

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