Special Session
IN02:
Revolutionary Space Exploration Concepts Using Onboard Computing Thursday, 25th May 2006
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Chien, Castano, and Lorenz Slides from Press conference (Chien PDF) (Castano PDF) (Lorenz PDF)
Important: Media Images - images are displayed smaller - full resolution will download
Images should be acknowledged "Courtesy of NASA" except Lorenz images and those explicitly labelled differently.
Images relating to the Autonomous Sciencecraft on Earth Observing One
Autonomous Sciencecraft Software on EO-1 enables tracking of active volcanic processes worldwide. Currently monitoring scores of volcanoes.
ASE controls EO-1 to track activity at the Mount Erebus Lava Lake in Antarctica
Images relating to the ongoing deployment to Mars Odyssey
Software has been developed to enable onboard prcessing of THEMIS data to detect and track martian phenomena such as thermal anomalies, the growth and retreat of the Martian polar frost cap, dust storms, and water ice clouds.Images of the Mars Odyssey Spacecraft
One goal is to track the seasonal variations in the edge of the polar frost cap.
Images relating to the ongoing deployment to the Mars Exploration Rovers
Software is in final testing for upload that will enable the MER rovers to track and detect dust devils and clouds. The below image shows the algorithm picking out dust devils in previous imagery. These algorithms enable more efficient tracking of dynamic science phenomena.
Int hat same software package software enables detection of clouds - again to improve science campaigns.
Detected clouds
Images relating to future rover autonomy
Image of future Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Rover using ChemCam instrument.
Image credit: Image by Jean-Luc Lacour and the ChemCam Team.
Images of rovers demonstrating autonomous capabilities in ground testbeds
Images relating to future applications
Autonomy could be used to track dynamic events such as the plume at Enceladus recently dicovered in Cassini imagery.
Such phenomena could also be tracked using thermal imaging techniques.
Autonomy could also be used to explore dynamic bodies such as comets - which have dynamic events such as this plume observed by the Deep Impact mission.
Io, which is volcanically active, also would be a prime target for investigation using onboard autonomy. Such actvitiy has been captured by the Galileo spacecraft.
Such activity could be detected by its plume and this information used to retarget during flybys.
Possible subsurface oceans of the Jovian moon Europa are also of great scientific interest. Exploring such an environment would benefit gretly fromonboard decision-making. Artists depiction of a cryobot exploring such an ocean.
Space Weather is another dynamic phenomena which could be studies effectively using smart spacecraft. Solar instrumentation could detect phenomena such as Coronal Mass Ejections and other spacecraft such as this depicted Earth Orbiting constellation woould then respond to observe.
An Aerobot exploring Titan, a moon of Saturn, could use autonomy to detect and track phenomena such as methane thunderstorms, methane geysers, or cryovolcanoes. Round trip light times and limited ability to return data make autonomy useful.
Missions to Europa could use onboard computing to search for crustal change by tracking the crust boundaries on subsequent orbits - more efficiently using limited downlink bandwidth by searching onboard.
Other terrestrial phenomena such as dust storms are ideal for tracking with sensorweb autonomy
Images of Titan - See Ralph Lorenz's Web Page. Images of Titan from Ralph Lorez (note different Acknowledgements)