Space Exploration Rovers docked with Portable Exploration Module Photo Credit/NASA Desert Rats
Astronaut Stan Love and NASA geologist Jake Bleacher have wrapped up their Desert RATS Space Exploration Rover test drive with some pretty down to Earth impressions of the prototype for a mobile habitat that would enable new generations of explorers to traverse the moon, an asteroid or possibly Mars.
They veteran shuttle crewman and expert in lava flows are just two of the 100 engineers, scientists and astronauts gathered on the Black Point Lava Flow in Northern Arizona for Desert RATS, an annual two week exercise to develop the rovers, habitats, space suits and tools that will make voyages to deep space destinations possible.
“Any time you build a model and start to test it, you learn something,” Love, driver of the most advanced of this year’s rovers, told NASA Edge on Wednesday. NASA Edge plans daily web casts from Black Point at 1 p.m., EDT, until the exercise draws to a close on Sept. 15. “That is why we are taking all the time and effort to bring all these people and all this equipment out to the desert to test it — so we can learn what works and what doesn’t. Someday, the one we send to the moon will be perfect.”
(The Coalition for Space Exploration has joined with the Challenger Center for Space Science Education to sponsor the web casts and other Desert RATS educational activities.)
What’s most in need of an upgrade? The toilet.
Space Exploration Rover's interior is modern, but cozy Photo Credit/NASA Desert Rats
“Interestingly enough, that is what you notice the most. What do you eat?. How do you sleep? How do you go to the bathroom?” said Love, after sharing Rover B with Bleacher for six days. “When people are interested in learning more about space travel, those are the first things they are interested in. What is it like being there, living there, doing the things you do every day, eating, sleeping and so on?”
Until there are improvements, the rover teams are simply bagging their wastes until they can be disposed of every three days.
Stan Love Photo Credit/NASA
This year’s Desert RATS is simulating a lengthy traverse near the moon’s south pole. At the end of the sixth day, the two rovers docked with a Portable Exploration Module prototype to swap out drivers and geologists. During their drives, the rover crews look for rock formations of scientific value to explore with short spacewalks based from their mobile habitats.
Love and Bleacher said their pairing went well.
“When you are living in small spaces with other people, you just have to get your work done and have a good sense of humor about it,” said Bleacher. “I think we both had a pretty good sense of humor, and it merged really well. We got our work done, and it was a real pleasure to work with Stan.”
Jake Bleacher Photo Credit/NASA Desert Rats
NASA’s Constellation back to the moon program is facing cancellation by the White House. President Obama has called on NASA to aim for the human exploration of an asteroid by 2025 instead and a mission to Mars a decade later.
While Congress deliberates on the White House request, NASA is covering the bases with development programs like Desert Rats, which is in its 13th year of preparing equipment for astronauts no matter their destinations.
However, explorations of the destinations mentioned so far would benefit from the presence of geologists, who could study the terrain for clues to its origins and similarities with the Earth.
“If we are going to send people somewhere, the moon or Mars, the asteroids, wherever it may be., they are going to be on a solid surface,” said Bleacher. “One of the obvious things they will want to do, is study geologic processes, determine how the processes shaped that surface.”
Love, a planetary geologist, flew aboard a 13-day shuttle assembly mission to the International Space Station in 2008, a decade after his selection by NASA for astronaut training.
Bleacher joined NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as a research geologist two years ago.