Walking on the Moon, One Day
Norcat contributes to space race
The Juno Rovers -- about 1 metre x 1 metre in size and 30 centimetres high -- look like remote controlled toys.
While they aren't built from Lego blocks, the u-shaped vehicles do share something with the children's toy. Their component parts, set in the middle of the "u", can be quickly changed. A scoop can be switched with drills or a ground-penetrating radar system or a prospecting kit. These rovers, assembled in Sudbury, will be integral in sustaining life on the moon. They can smooth moon dust into flat landing areas; scoop up rock and carry it to a type of oven, which will cook out any oxygen and water in the rock for humans to use; as well as, perhaps, help with the establishment of a permanent station under the moon's surface. The Sudbury-based Northern Centre for Advanced Technology, or NORCAT, has set up 27 prospector-style tents for the experiments. NORCAT is leading the mission -- commissioned by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, with participation from the German Aerospace Center and Space Resources Canada -- to test equipment that it and a handful of other Canadian companies have developed to, one day, send to the moon and later, hopefully, Mars. For the past two weeks, led by the Sudbury NORCAT team, space scientists and engineers from Canada, Germany and United States, have been testing rovers, site preparation systems, resource prospecting instruments, as well as oxygen production equipment that could be used for future space exploration missions. Field exercises using space medicine and lunar geology have also been performed at the site. The tests provide valuable information about systems that could support an extraterrestrial or planetary exploration mission by minimizing the amount of water and oxygen that must be transported from Earth. "Who would have thunk a bunch of miners would come up here and leading this space mission. It's so counter-intuitive," said Dale Boucher. Boucher, the director of Innovation at the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology, is in one of the beige tents, talking to The Sudbury Star on a satellite phone. Like the other Canadians, he's wearing bright red coveralls with a maple leaf badge sewn on his sleeve. He's just had lunch cooked by Sudbury's Michael Cullen and a Cambrian College student chef on placement, who are responsible for feeding the crew of about 100 each day of the mission, which began Jan. 24 and finishes Feb. 13. There's no other place on Earth like this Hawaiian crater. Its sediment is the closest you'll find to lunar regolith, or moon dust. "It has some physical characteristics similar to the Apollo 16 landing site," Boucher said. "We're primarily focused on in situ resource utilization -- ISRU ... This entire analogue mission is focused on those types of experiments. How do you make oxygen from the dirt on the ground? How do you prepare a landing pad using very small excavators?" (In NORCAT's case, "in situ resource utilization" means using the moon's natural resources to sustain human visitors. Analogue missions, meanwhile, are simulations of space operations that take place at sites on Earth that resemble in some key way a surface or subsurface environment of another planet.) NORCAT has invented its own simulated lunar regolith called Chenobi that it sells for $40,000 a ton. However, like moon dust, it's made up of tiny particles shaped like fish hooks that can do a lot of damage if inhaled, so it's difficult to work with. And you can't simulate the kind of challenges you'd find in the field on an analogue mission such as this, said Boucher. There have been many challenges to overcome. It's cold and windy this far up Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano that last erupted about 4,000 years ago. At night, water freezes in the crater. Only an invasive species of grass that they've been told to pull out, and a few shrubs they're not to touch, grow in the orange dirt. While there is no wind on the moon, Mars has does have severe gusts that space explorers' equipment will likely one day have to contend with. Cold will also be a factor as temperatures on the moon can vary from about 0 C to -200 C deep inside a crater. "We have this solar concentrator system that is designed to collect solar energy and turn into a beam of light for use in a carbo-thermal plant as a heat generator," he said. It's kind of like a super magnifying glass that has a spot beam, the size of a hockey puck. This solar concentrator is the heat source used to cook the oxygen or water out of rock and sediment. However, the cold and the wind, which has blown dust that has scratched its mirrors, have been issues for the solar concentrator. Lower atmospheric pressure on the volcano has also affected the way motor cooling works, which has resulted in a couple of burnt out motors. Then there's the high iron content in the volcanic dust that has infiltrated circuit boards and imaging systems, causing failures in the electronics. "These analogue missions are real analogues to real missions," Boucher said. "Places were you can stress the subsystems, the components, the people, in a fashion you cannot do in a laboratory." People have been stressed, too. Some of the engineers and scientists have experienced severe sunburn, while others have suffered altitude sickness. Dehydration is another issue that comes up at the morning safety meetings hosted by NORCAT. Long days are another factor. The group sleeps in the nearby town of Hilo, about an hour away. Breakfast is at 5 a.m. and all make it up the mountain before the sun rises at 7 a.m. Then it's back to the hotel by 6:30 p.m. to shower off the volcanic matter that has infiltrated every pore. "This is called an analogue mission, so we're testing the whole deployment procedure. Things like how do you set up a tent city," Boucher explained. "Power and distribution, so that it helps the experiments be successful." Besides housing needs, NORCAT was also responsible for installing a communications system on the mountain. In situ resource utilization is about using either the moon or Mars's natural resources to sustain human visitors. To land one litre of water on the moon would cost a space agency $100,000 a bottle. So, it makes sense to use what's in the surrounding landscape. In Hawaii, the researchers were able to make oxygen out of the rocks. "It's pretty cool," said Boucher. You can really reduce the cost of any robotic or human mission with in situ resource utilization, he said. "(NORCAT's) mandate is to transfer technology between the space sector and the private sector. That's what we have to do," Boucher said. This past week, U.S. President Barack Obama made an announcement concerning the future of NASA. He wants more of its budget to be spent on helping private companies develop space technology and in the future to buy tickets for its astronauts rather than build rockets to move them there. While it's bad news for NASA's Constellation project, which has been working on developing new rockets and spacecraft for renewed trips to the moon and beyond, the new focus could help NORCAT. "NORCAT's focus has been on in situ resource utilization," said Boucher. "It's very clearly called out in this budget realignment. What is it going to mean? It could be good news for NORCAT. It is good news for the ISRU community." Darryl Lake, founder and CEO of NORCAT, agrees. "As long as he supports the space program, it's good for us," he said. "The guys from NASA wanted us to take the technology they're using in space and bring it to the private sector on Earth. That's exactly why we got into it ... "So, when Obama makes a statement like 'we're going to support the private sector more,' it gives us huge opportunities to do that." Thursday morning found Lake looking at pictures of the mission on his computer in his Sudbury office. He's the only one on the NORCAT team who was left behind. "I'm just a chemist, not one of these hot shot super duper robotics systems integrators," he said, shrugging. The 12 others involved in the off-planet projects are in Hawaii. The contracts with space agencies date back eight years. "Our biggest contracts are coming out next year," said Lake. "They will go on until the mission leaves Earth. Once you're on a mission, you stay between two and five years, depending on what NASA dictates." The earliest possible take-off for their rovers to the moon would be 2015. "That's optimistic ... in my view, especially with Obama's cutback on some of the stuff in the States right now. It may not be until 2018. Then we'll be there at least two years ... so we'll be on a contract with NASA until 2020." NORCAT has a series of contracts, ranging from $500,000 to $3 million, for its off-planet projects, everything from rovers to specialty drills. "The contract with the Canadian Space Agency is to build it. NASA is to use it," Lake explained. "That's the difference between the two. This mission is a NASA mission. The Canadian Space Agency is just a participant." NORCAT is the lead agency for the Juno land rover contract. It has farmed out pieces of the rovers to other companies, everything from its chassis to electronic parts. A group at the University of Toronto programs the rovers to work together "like ants" when performing a task, Lake said. For instance, they'll use their ground penetrating radar to look for rocks, mapping out an area and then communicate as a team. "If one of them gets stuck or breaks down, the others literally move him out of the way. Redistribute themselves ... Just like ants would do. If one ant gets hurt, they push him out of the way and keep going," he said. The rovers are still several years away from being space ready. "We like to make them as light as we can," Lake said. "But we're not into the sophisticated alloys we would have to make them out of before we land on the moon ... What we're concentrating on right now is how much power do they use?" One of the drills they've managed to power with only 100 watts, the power it takes to turn on a light bulb. Mind you, it drills slowly. After the Hawaiian mission, the group will head back to their concrete pad in the NORCAT building on Maley Drive and spend the next 1 1/2 years applying the lessons they've learned in the field to their machines. "We learn a lot of lessons at these kinds of things. It helps us redesign our equipment and improve our systems. That's what our plan is," said Boucher. The next mission could be to Devon Island in the high Arctic or Pavilion Lake in B.C. "The experiments were not flawless, which is what we want. Everything is absolutely outstanding," Boucher said. "The whole deployment from one end to the other has gone swimmingly ... I think it's awesome." Cette adresse email est protégée contre les robots des spammeurs, vous devez activer Javascript pour la voir. |
Clustered in a volcanic crater, at 9,000-feet elevation on Hawaii's Big Island, is a contingent of tents and Legolike land rovers outfitted with miniature mining equipment.