This is a big step forward! Congratulations!
NASA's newest
scientific rover is set for testing May 3 through June 8 in the highest part of
Greenland.
The robot known as GROVER, which stands for both Greenland
Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, will
roam the frigid landscape collecting measurements to help scientists better
understand changes in the massive ice sheet.
This autonomous, solar-powered
robot carries a ground-penetrating radar to study how snow accumulates, adding
layer upon layer to the ice sheet over time.
Greenland's surface layer
vaulted into the news in summer 2012 when higher than normal temperatures caused
surface melting across about 97 percent of the ice sheet. Scientists at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., expect GROVER to detect the layer
of the ice sheet that formed in the aftermath of that extreme melt event.
Research with polar rovers costs less than aircraft or satellites, the
usual platforms.
"Robots like GROVER will give us a new tool for
glaciology studies," said Lora Koenig, a glaciologist at Goddard and science
advisor on the project.
GROVER will be joined on the ice sheet in June
by another robot, named Cool Robot, developed at Dartmouth College, Hanover,
N.H., with funding from the National Science Foundation. This rover can tow a
variety of instrument packages to conduct glaciological and atmospheric sampling
studies.
GROVER was developed in 2010 and 2011 by teams of students
participating in summer engineering boot camps at Goddard. The students were
interested in building a rover and approached Koenig about whether a rover could
aid her studies of snow accumulation on ice sheets. This information typically
is gathered by radars carried on snowmobiles and airplanes. Koenig suggested
putting a radar on a rover for this work.
Koenig, now a science advisor
on the GROVER Project, asked Hans-Peter Marshall, a glaciologist at Boise State
University to bring in his expertise in small, low-power, autonomous radars that
could be mounted on GROVER. Since its inception at the boot camp, GROVER has
been fine-tuned, with NASA funding, at Boise State.
The tank-like GROVER
prototype stands six feet tall, including its solar panels. It weighs about 800
pounds and traverses the ice on two repurposed snowmobile tracks. The robot is
powered entirely by solar energy, so it can operate in pristine polar
environments without adding to air pollution. The panels are mounted in an
inverted V, allowing them to collect energy from the sun and sunlight reflected
off the ice sheet.
A ground-penetrating radar powered by two
rechargeable batteries rests on the back of the rover. The radar sends radio
wave pulses into the ice sheet, and the waves bounce off buried features,
informing researchers about the characteristics of the snow and ice layers.
From a research station operated by the National Science Foundation
called Summit Camp, a spot where the ice sheet is about 2 miles thick, GROVER
will crawl at an average speed of 1.2 mph (2 kilometers per hour). Because the
sun never dips below the horizon during the Arctic summer, GROVER can work at
any time during the day and should be able to work longer and gather more data
than a human on a snowmobile.
At the beginning of the summit tests,
Koenig's team will keep GROVER close to camp and communicate with it via Wi-Fi
within a three-mile (4.8-kilometer) range. GROVER will transmit snippets of data
during the trial to ensure it is working properly but the majority of data will
be recovered at the end of the season. The researchers eventually will switch to
satellite communications, which will allow the robot to roam farther and
transmit data in real time. Ideally, researchers will be able to drive the rover
from their desks.
"We think it's really powerful," said Gabriel Trisca,
a Boise State master's degree student who developed GROVER's software. "The fact
is the robot could be anywhere in the world and we'll be able to control it from
anywhere."
Michael Comberiate, a retired NASA engineer and manager of
Goddard's Engineering Boot Camp said the Earth-bound Greenland Rover is similar
to NASA missions off the planet.
"GROVER is just like a spacecraft but
it has to operate on the ground," Comberiate said. "It has to survive unattended
for months in a hostile environment, with just a few commands to interrogate it
and find out its status and give it some directions for how to accommodate
situations it finds itself in."
Koenig hopes more radar data will help
shed light on Greenland's snow accumulation. Scientists compare annual
accumulation to the volume of ice lost to sea each year to calculate the ice
sheet's overall mass balance and its contribution to sea level rise.
For
images and a video about GROVER, visit:
The World Has Four Corners But Space Is Endless. The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. - H.G. Wells, "The Discovery of the Future," 1901
