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| 12.05.2008 |
| Cratos’ Mobility Operations Demonstrated in ISRU Field Tests at Mauna Kea VolcanoCratos, a mobile Load, Haul, Dump technology development vehicle, performed regolith excavation, haul, and delivery; crater wall ascent and descent; and compacted simulant excavation mobility operations at a remote test site on the Mauna Kea volcano on the big island of Hawaii, as a part of the In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) field tests. The webpage for the Lunar Testing on Hawaii Island is http://www.astroday.net/MKrovers.html. Cratos, a tracked, remotely controlled vehicle was developed at GRC through a collaborative effort between RHI, MAC, RXN, REC, DER, and TFOME. Cratos's actuation systems, telemetry, power, sensors, video, processing and teleoperation systems were designed and built by the RHI Mobile and Remote Sensing (MARS) lab at GRC. The digger was designed by RHI and developed by TFOME. Cratos demonstrated that a low power mobility system can successfully operate for up to six hours on a single charge operating in a lunar analog test site. Operated by TFOME personnel, from an excavation site about 100 meters from a reactor, Cratos was able to deliver one load of regolith in a twenty minute round trip and is capable of excavating up to 30 kg of regolith per dig. This equates to 540 kg of regolith delivered during a six hour operation utilizing Cratos's 17 amp hour battery system. The webpage for watching our claim to fame movies (Slope test, Digging test, and Delivery to Oxygen Plant) is http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/OptInstr/MobileRemoteSense.html This work is supported by SMD and ESMD (ISRU)Points of Contact: Mike Krasowski, Larry Greer, John Caruso, Danny Spina
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| 11.21.2008 |
| MISSE 7 Communications Interface Box (CIB) Simulator Complete and Delivered- The Mobile and Remote Sensing (MARS) Lab also completed and delivered the CIB Simulator on November 7, 2008 to the Naval Research Laboratory the MISSE7 (Materials International Space Station Experiment 7). The CIB provides a bridge between the 22 resident active experiments and the ISS MIL-STD-1553 bus, for telemetry and command data using Half-Duplex RS-485. It is a radiation hardened design that will attach to the MIL-STD-1553 bus through the Express Logistics Carrier on the ISS. The simulator is a LabVIEW based interface with hardware to attach to the RS-485 bus and allows experimenters to test and validate operation of their experiments with the CIB. Sandia National Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center, the Wright Patterson Air Force Research Laboratory, and Naval Research Laboratory have used the simulator to validate compliance of the experiments hardware and software with the MISSE7 CIB Interface Control Document. This work was supported through a Space Act Agreement with NRLPoint of Contact: Norm Prokop, Michael Krasowski
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| 11.21.2008 |
| Flight Electronics Team Delivers the Electronics for MISSE 7 Active Glenn Experiments for PEC B: On November 7th 2008, the Mobile and Remote Sensing (MARS) Lab in the Optical Instrumentation and NDE Branch delivered the GRC MISSE7 (Materials International Space Station Experiment 7) electronics for the only active Glenn experiments: Thermal Control Paints Experiment (PI: RES/Don Jaworske) and Atomic Oxygen Fluence Monitor Experiment (PI: RES/ALPH Bruce Banks). This team designed, built, and programmed the complete package that was delivered to Boeing at MSFC for integration of the electronics assemblies for the MISSE7 Passive Experiments Container (PEC) B. The assemblies allow remote measurement of the two experiments, both of which are microampere current measurements. The electronics autonomously perform the measurements and then transmit the telemetry data to the MISSE7 Communications Interface Box (CIB) for transmission from the International Space Station (ISS) via Low Rate Telemetry (LRT) link. The MISSE7 mission is the first of the MISSE missions to use the ISS telemetry channel for transmitting experiment telemetry data. Point of Contact: Norm Prokop, Larry Greer
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