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Hi all,

The following is a status update on the Pele Rover Mission. The Pele
lunar rover mission concept is a proposal developed by a joint team of
the University of Hawaii, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Johnson
Space Center, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, the Lavochkin Association,
and Brown University. The mission concept proposes to explore issues
in lunar science and planetary volcanism that were left unanswered by
Apollo. The Pele team is currently conducting field trials with a
Marsokhod rover in the Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii. A major focus of these
tests is to evaluate the use of advanced teleoperations methods (e.g.,
virtual environment based control, high-fidelity stereo video based
telepresence) for operating the rover from geographically distributed
remote control stations.

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		      Pele Mission Status Report
	    Hawaii Volcano Observatory -- Kilauea, Hawaii
			     13-Feb-1995
   
   Today saw the start of the Mars phase of planetary rover science
   simulations involving the Marsokhod rover at the Kilauea volcano in
   Hawaii. The team of planetary scientists located at NASA Ames Research
   Center successfully commanded the vehicle through a pre-planned 100
   meter traverse along the southwest rift zone above the main caldera
   during six hours of continous operation. They employed single frame
   images generated by a pair of mast-mounted stereographic cameras, an
   arm-mounted camera and an extremely high-resolution Kodak 420 Digital
   Camera System located on the forward pallet. Concurrently, the on-site
   engineering team monitored the rover's operation and maintained the
   network communications link with the mainland.
   
   Among the challenges for the off-site science team is determining
   where they are with respect to local volcanic features. Using
   guidelines established by Dr. Ron Greeley, they are working from
   aerial and satellite photos of Kilauea that represent the type of
   images that are expected to be available for future lunar and Mars
   landing missions.
   
   The morning started with favorable, partly cloudy conditions above the
   volcano. By 1 p.m., local time, the weather at the site had
   deteriorated significantly and the decision was made to suspend
   activities for the day before the nominal 3 p.m. shut down time. The
   six hours of operations exceeded the target goal of four hours of
   full-up science-driven ops per day. The on-site team also operated the
   vehicle for an hour at the end of the day at the HVO for a public
   demonstration.
   
   The science team at Ames is now reviewing the results, while NASA,
   McDonnell Douglas and EDS engineers are proceeding with adjustments to
   the rover and associated support equipment in the Hawaii Volcano
   Observatory tower that is serving as the on-site mission ops center.
   In particular, they are considering modifications to the rover antenna
   superstructure that could improve the data through-put to the Ku-band
   uplink station at HVO, as well as an improved power management plan.
   Additionally, they are refining parameters that should improve the
   accuracy of state vector estimates and calculations, while also
   finishing software that will enable the use of the Marsokhod's
   MDA-developed manipulator arm.
   
   Assuming that the weather remains favorable, the Mars science tests
   will continue tomorrow (Tuesday) and Wednesday, from 7 a.m to 3 p.m.
   (Hawaii time). Then, on Thursday through Saturday, the teams at Ames
   and Kilauea will conduct lunar science simulations under the direction
   of Dr. Jeff Taylor of the University of Hawaii. These will utilize the
   real-time stereo video imaging capabilities that have been installed
   on the Marsokhod (by contrast, in Mars mode, the science team has
   access only to single-frame pictures from the various imaging
   instruments on the rover).
   
   The success of today's tests have confirmed the merit of the joint
   NASA-McDonnell Douglas-Lavochkin-VNIITransMash research effort to
   develop next-generation rovers for exploring the Moon and Mars.
   Feedback from the science team is already proving useful in
   identifying future improvements. Furthermore, they also are helping
   prepare for the rover's deployment in the upcoming JASON Foundation
   for Education's JASON VI Expedition, which is scheduled to start on 27
   February.

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For additional information on Marsokhod and JASON activities check the
following WWW pages:

NASA Ames Intelligent Mechanisms Group
  http://maas-neotek.arc.nasa.gov/
  http://maas-neotek.arc.nasa.gov/marsokhod

McDonnell Douglas
  http://pat.mdc.com/HB/new/Planetary/planetary.html

JASON Foundation
  http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/JASON.html


-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
 "San Francisco has only one                        Terry Fong <terry@cmu.edu>
  drawback - it's hard to leave..."        Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
                -- Rudyard Kipling         Pittsburgh, PA 15213   412-268-1416