Rover Exploration Challenge at the Ontario Science Centre (July 28th and 29th 2018)

PVL is running a rover mission control simulation at the Ontario Science Center on July 28th and 29th. Everyone is invited to come, visit and participate as we explore a mystery planet! For more information, over to Dr. Christina Smith.
(Image taken from: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/mars-curiosity/en/ )

by Dr. Christina L. Smith

You may (or may not) have noticed that Mars is looking a little brighter than usual at the moment. And from July 27^th-30^th it will actually be the brightest it has been since 2003! Mars is currently approaching opposition where the Sun, the Earth, and Mars are all in alignment. This happens roughly every 26 months and this one will happen on July 27^th. Closely related to this is the closest approach of Mars to Earth – this time it happens four days later on July 31^st. To celebrate Mars’ proximity and opposition, a number of events are happening around Toronto (and beyond) this week to let you observe and learn about Mars and just generally bask in the glory of The Red Planet’s awesomeness.

As part of this, some members of the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory are putting on an event at the Ontario Science Centre this coming weekend (July 28^th and 29^th) called the Rover Exploration Challenge. This is a drop in event where participants can experience what it’s like to be part of a team trying to explore another planet. They’ll be divided up into three science groups, each of whom have a different set of science goals to achieve in a limited amount of Rover Science Time. Every Rover Day, lasting about half an hour, a different team will come in and will be given a Mission Briefing to show them what kind of science they can do. Afterwards, Science Leads will take them through everything we know so far relating to their science goals – what we know, what we don’t know, what they can do to help complete the mission.

The first decision the Mission Team will need to make is whether they want the rover to drive. Each drive allows the rover to explore a new area, but the rover can’t go back to explore a place it’s already been so they have to make sure they have done everything they might want to do before moving on!  Different Science Groups have different goals, which may influence whether or not they want to drive and in this team, democracy rules so if the majority says a drive is “Go!” then that’s what will happen. So if one group needs to stay put or needs to drive, they need to persuade the other science teams that that’s what they should vote for.

After the drive decision, the different Science Groups need to decide what they want to study and when during the Rover Day. There’s atmospheric measurements, water tests, ground tests, and imaging available to take with the rover, and different sites could be very different from one another so it’s important to test these at different locations along the Rover’s Exploration Path. After they’ve decided what they want the rover to do and put it into the Rover Plan, it’s time to check the plan, upload it to the rover, and wait for the results to come back. But there’s always an element of risk when using the rover: observations could fail, drives could fault, or the whole rover could shut down...