28. Sept. - 1. Oct. 2009

"Declaring Ground Safe"

Ein karges Gebiet mit Tephra It's a barren field with volcanic tephra, a reddish powdery dust covers the soil and a steep wall rises just in front of the site: This is not Mars, nor the Moon, but it might turn out to be one of the places where scientists and engineers of the European Space Agency and teams from AOES, TNO, French Air Force and the Austrian Space Forum place one of the many steps towards other planets. The Wingertsbergwand in Western Germany is the place to be for a series of field tests doing robotic as well as human exploration.

Enlarge pictures by clicking on the thumbnails.
The first day was focused on getting the infrastructure going: Setting up a base camp, firing up the generator and selecting the "landing" site for the AOES lander simulator which resembles a small version of the lower stage of the Apollo lunar landing module, but it is stuffed with a full suite of instruments assessing environmental parameters.

"As soon as the operations console for the Dignity rover from the Austrian Space Forum was established, the little robotic vehicle was tasked to inspect the AOES lander" explains Dr. Bernard Foing from the European Space Agency, who is heading the field tests. The rover operators had to check for potential damages before declaring "Ground operational", that is the term for summarizing that the landing vehicle has safely arrived on Mars and is able to perform basic operations.

The next step was to search for basaltic rocks, which were not part of the erupted lava flow from the Eifel volcano 13.000 years ago - deliberately placed by one of the teams geologists in the test field, another geologist was tasked to direct the rover operators accordingly to search for these original soil samples as it might one day happen on the Red Planet.

"All tasks were accomplished as originally planned", Gernot Groemer from the Austrian Space Forum summarized, "and we collected a fairly impressive amount of data concerning the timing and telemetry information. Although our Dignity images were rather crude, the geologists were still able to distinguish various rock types from the data stream. A more precise analysis was than performed later with a Raman spectrometer in the "habitat" by students from the French Air Force." Enlarge pictures by clicking on the thumbnails.

"EVA - A grand day out in space style"

The second day of the Eifel planetary exploration tests

Monday, 09:30: a team of highly motivated engineers, scientists and students from across Europe gather to study joint human robotic exploration strategies. Today is the big day for an Indian princess: Aouda.X, the pride of the Austrian Space Forum is a fully fledged planetary exploration spacesuit simulator which weighs roughly 40kg. "The dressing-up alone takes about one hour", Daniel Schildhammer from the Austrian Space Forum comments while slipping into the silverish suit. The operations console, dubbed "Phobos-station" for these field 8tests has a steady stream of data about the health of the analogue astronaut and its machine, which is a hybrid between a spacecraft to dress and a wearable computer.

And there is a surprise visitor: The major of the city of Mendig made the way to the Wingertsbergwand together with officials from the city to take a look at the unusual group of space specialists gathered in his city. He witnessed a fully operation spacesuit simulator: Daniel inspected the rover in a fraction of time it would need a rover to do so, switched on the On-Board Data Handling of the AOES rover (Advanced Operations And Engineering Services) and the lander and take a soil sample in roughly two minutes. In a next step, Aouda had to climb a small hill to reach the steep walls of the lava ashes pile, where the previous day mineral hunters had scavenged for precious small gemstones.

The second part of the test day was devoted to MECA (Mission Execution Crew Assistant), the autonomous crew assistance system which is able to guide astronauts through their day by aiding with procedures, increasing situational awareness and being able to react automatically to contingency situations. The tests were performed by deploying two analogue astronauts equipped with a laptop and wireless communication into the field.

Finally - the field party closed the test site. To end the day prematurely? No - much more adventurous! Mendig is known for its nearly 200 man-made caves which bear witness to the basalt mining industry since the medieval ages. Maybe not the first place where one would expect a perfect setting for a Mars simulation. But what if you'd know, that recently, lava tubes have been identified on the Red Planet? "This is probably the first time, a spacesuit simulator has been tested in such an extravagant environment. And Mendig is nearly perfect for that: The access to the cave is done via an elevator, there is electrical illumination to deploy test samples in the soil", Gernot Groemer from the Austrian Space Forum explains, "we will run tests on the navigation and telecommunication challenges, this environment brings. There's a lot of testing you can do in the lab - but when it comes to exploring new terrain, you just have no other choice but actually test the stuff in the open field. That's where you learn how to do things." - And that's exactly, what this field session is about. Enlarge pictures by clicking on the thumbnails.