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Microrovers

Microrovers



Microrovers Catalog

We've compiled a catalog of known microrovers that have already been built or designed, ranging in use from military applications to planetary exploration. However, only one rover that has actually visited another world - Sojourner (part of the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission) - is small enough to be considered a microrover.

Find out more about microrovers >>


Microrovers for Assisting Humans
by Bruce Betts

I am excited to share with you a new Planetary Society project. Cornell University and The Planetary Society have received a NASA grant to study "Microrovers Assisting Human Presence on the Moon and Mars." The Planetary Society, in general, and I, personally, have long been intrigued by the possibilities of microrovers -- by which we mean rovers with a mass of a few kilograms. This study will give us an opportunity to better understand and define microrovers: what they could do, how they might be important, and what their designs should include.

Background
The story of this NASA grant program begins with a Planetary Society member, Ralph Steckler. He left a bequest to NASA -- with The Planetary Society as the backup recipient if NASA couldn't take the money -- "for the colonization of space because [he believed] this is for the betterment of mankind." NASA found a way to utilize the money by creating the Ralph Steckler/Space Grant Space Colonization Research and Technology Development Opportunity.

The program is open to proposals only from NASA Space Grant University leads—one in each state. Because of their rover expertise, we approached folks at Cornell University with the idea of using microrovers as assistants to human exploration. We started the discussion with Jim Bell, who is Planetary Society president, a Cornell professor, and Mars Exploration Rovers Pancam lead. Jim signed on as a co-investigator on the proposal, and the New York Space Grant director, Professor Yervant Terzian, agreed to head up the proposal to the Steckler grant program.

Our proposal was one of 18 selected by NASA to receive Phase 1 funding. The Planetary Society will manage and coordinate all technical studies and input, as well as work on various aspects of the project. In addition, NASA requires us to match a significant portion of the funding. The Planetary Society has a long history with planetary rovers. It carried out rover testing in the early 1990s in the Mojave Desert, which helped raise the profile of rovers and pave the way to what became Sojourner and, later, the Mars Exploration Rovers. By the way, all three Mars rovers -- Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity -- were named through contests run or co-run by The Planetary Society for NASA.

You can help make our Microrover project happen!

Why Microrovers?
NASA and other countries have studied large rovers designed to carry humans, medium-sized robotic rovers like those used now on Mars, and even a low-gravity "nano?rover," but there is a largely unstudied niche of microrovers, which we loosely define as rovers with masses of one to a few kilograms. Even less studied is how they might work with humans on the Moon, Mars, or other bodies.

Because of their low cost and mass, several microrovers could be used at an outpost and would be easy to customize and deploy. Think how much easier it would be to include a few microrovers on a robotic precursor or on a human mission than to include a single rover with a mass of many hundreds of kilograms.

Microrovers could assist human explorers with basic tasks outside their habitat while humans remain safely in?side, thus increasing efficiency and safety as well as helping to limit extravehicular activities to human-optimized tasks. Our project will address the capabilities that microrovers could and should have to assist humans, including facilities for inspection, science, and reconnaissance.

Also, let's face it -- they're cool! That's not enough to motivate studying them, but it sure makes the project and the vision more fun. Imagine astronauts carrying a few of these intrepid explorers with them to a planetary surface. They would "release" them to do reconnaissance around the site so that when the astronauts went outside, which is always dangerous work, they could focus on the most promising discoveries already made by the microrovers. The microrovers could be teleoperated (joysticked) by astronauts or from the ground, or they could operate autonomously. They also could explore areas considered too dangerous for astronauts to visit.

The Long-Term Vision
What we'd like to end up with after a multiphase project is the creation of a well-studied, Earth-tested, standardized microrover design that can be utilized with a variety of future payloads. Like the CubeSat model for spacecraft, a standardized microrover with built-in chassis, electronics, and driving abilities would enable competition among specific scientific and engineering payloads for a variety of applications. This would allow flexibility and encourage participation by a variety of types of people and institutions.

NASA's Phase 1 is intended to establish the scientific and technical merit and feasibility of the project. After Phase 1, groups submit proposals for Phases 2 and 3, which in our case would actually get into prototyping and field testing.

Here's what we'll do in Phase 1. We are gathering what microrover work has been done for rovers in space and on Earth. In preparing the proposal, it was clear that a central source for this type of information didn't exist. The Planetary Society will become this central source. Much has been done on larger rovers for space, but also for microrover-sized vehicles on Earth—from military microrovers to science and commercial microrovers. Although, clearly, some aspects of design won't be relevant, some will, and we don't want to reinvent the (rover) wheel.

We also will be focusing on studying microrover capabilities to assist humans and to carry out tasks to support human colonization and settlement. We'll learn what they can do to be useful and which roles really are optimized to be carried out by microrovers.

These desired roles will then motivate requirements for "Studies of Trade-Offs and Optimum Designs for Microrovers for Human Settlement and Colonization," a collaboration of a Cornell design class taught by Professor Mason Peck and a professional design group led by Tomas Svitek of Stellar Exploration, Inc., with whom we have worked on other projects such as Phobos LIFE and LightSail-1.

Another part of the project is to conduct public information and outreach activities, given that this is part of what The Planetary Society is intended to do: communicate with and inspire the public on matters concerning space exploration.

Besides myself and those already mentioned, others who also are formally involved with the project are former astronaut, planetary scientist, and Planetary Society Adviser Thomas Jones; former JPL engineer and advanced concepts manager Doug Stetson; and JPL rover engineer, designer, and manager Brian Wilcox. We're also engaging a number of students, both in the Cornell class and outside it. We have a great team and a great project, and we're rolling out on microrovers.

Support the development of microrovers! Donate today!

Bruce Betts is director of projects for The Planetary Society.