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Dusty Planetary Disks Around Two Nearby Stars Resemble Our Kuiper Belt
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 2 min read
Sols 4307-4308: Bright Rocks Catch Our Eyes
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image while exploring a rock-strewn channel of Gediz Vallis on the Red Planet. Mission scientists were particularly intrigued to investigate several bright-toned rocks (at the middle-right, bottom-right and bottom-center of the image), similar to rocks that Curiosity had encountered previously that were unexpectedly rich in sulfur. This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera aboard Curiosity on Sol 4306 — Martian day 4,306 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission — on Sept. 16, 2024 at 12:47:18 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, Sept. 16, 2024
We made good progress through Gediz Vallis in the weekend drive, landing in a segment of the channel containing a mix of loose rubble and other channel-filling debris. Amongst the jumbled scene, though, particular objects of interest caught our eye: bright rocks. In past workspaces in Gediz Vallis, similar bright rocks have been associated with very high to almost pure sulfur contents. As all good geologists know, however, color is not diagnostic, so we cannot assume these are the same as sulfur-rich rocks we have encountered previously. The only way to know is to collect data, and that was a significant focus of today’s plan.
We planned multiple mosaics across the examples of bright rocks visible in the image above. Mastcam and ChemCam RMI will cover “Bright Dot Lake” and “Sheep Creek” both in the right midfield of the image. Mastcam imaged the example in the bottom right corner of the image at “Marble Falls,” and ChemCam LIBS targeted one of the small bright fragments along the bottom of the image at “Blanc Lake.” There was also a small bit of bright material in the workspace, but unfortunately, it was not reachable by APXS. APXS analyzed a spot near the bright material, at target “Frog Lake,” and MAHLI was able to tack on a few extra images around that target that should capture the bright material. MAHLI also imaged a vuggy target in the workspace at “Grasshopper Flat.” The wider context of the channel was also of interest for imaging, so we captured the full expanse of the channel with one Mastcam mosaic, and focused another on mounds distributed through the channel at target “Copper Creek.”
Even with all this rock imaging, we did not miss a beat with our environmental monitoring. We planned regular RAD, REMS, and DAN measurements, mid and late day atmospheric dust observations, a cloud movie, and dust devil imaging.
Our drive is planned to take us up onto one of the ridges in the channel. Will we find more bright rocks there? Or something new and unexpected that was delivered down Gediz Vallis by some past Martian flood or debris flow? Only the channel knows!
Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework
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Last Updated Sep 17, 2024 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
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By NASA
For some people, working for NASA is a lifelong dream. For others, it is an interesting and perhaps unexpected opportunity that comes up at just the right time and place.
Everything from family ties and influential teachers to witnessing human spaceflight history and enjoying sci-fi entertainment has helped bring people of all backgrounds together at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Several of them recently shared their inspiration to join the NASA team.
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“As a kid, I always had my head up looking at the stars. I loved astronomy and seeing videos of humans walking on the Moon fascinated me! I wanted to be the first female to walk on the Moon. When Star Wars came out, I wanted to build my own R2-D2 that could explore the galaxies. I was curious how things worked (so I could build a robot) and a cousin told me about engineering. That was the name for what I wanted to do! So, I went to the High School for Engineering Professions in Houston. The guidance counselor there told me about an opportunity to apply for a summer internship with NASA as a junior. I got in and I’ve worked with NASA as much as I could since I was 16 years old – internships and full-time positions. I may not get the chance to be an astronaut and walk on the Moon, but I know I will play a role in helping achieve that dream for another female and a person of color!”
– Alicia Baker, engineering project manager for Portable Life Support System test support, JSC Engineering, Technology, and Science (JETS) Contract
Alicia Baker in a spacesuit test chamber at Johnson Space Center.NASA/David DeHoyos “My dad was an aerospace engineer with Lockheed Martin. I went to take your kid to work day and got to stand in front of a booster engine. I’ve wanted to work in the space industry ever since. I almost didn’t enter the field after getting my aerospace degree, but I was fortunate to take an Intro to Human Spaceflight class during my last quarter of college. Without that class and the professor (who had worked at Johnson) I wouldn’t be here today. I’m so glad my path led me here. Johnson is such a great place to be, and I can look back and tell little Margaret that we did it!”
– Margaret Kennedy, aerospace systems engineer, Engineering Directorate Crew and Thermal Systems Division
Margaret Kennedy and her dad visited Space Center Houston when she started her job at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in October 2019.Image courtesy of Margaret Kennedy “In first grade, my teacher organized a ‘Space Week’ in which we learned about outer space. Her sons – who were studying engineering in college – came and launched model rockets for us. I knew from that point on that I wanted to work at NASA when I grew up.”
– Krista Farrell, International Space Station attitude determination and control officer and motion control systems instructor; Boeing Starliner guidance, navigation, and control instructor
Krista Farrell (center) stands with members of the Expedition 71 crew. From left: NASA astronauts Jeannette Epps, Matt Dominick, and Mike Barratt; Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin; and NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson. NASA/Josh Valcarcel “I didn’t think I would ever work for NASA. But multiple professors in college encouraged me to challenge myself and do some space research. I realized that it was something that I was very passionate about. Thanks to my research work for the Europa Clipper as an undergraduate student, I got my first internship at NASA and subsequently an offer to join the Pathways Program. Now I am part of a small group of engineers that solve entry, descent, and landing problems for multiple missions on Earth, the Moon, and Mars.”
– Sergio Sandoval, guidance engineer, Engineering Directorate Flight Mechanics and Trajectory Design Branch
Sergio Sandoval helps staff a NASA table during a Johnson Space Center community engagement event.Image courtesy of Sergio Sandoval
“Dad would take me to the viewing room of the original Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) during the Apollo era. He was one of the people supporting MOCR in the Staff Support Room. I have worked at Johnson for 27 years [as a contractor] for Lockheed Martin, Hamilton Sundstrand, and Jacobs Technology.”
– David Fanelli, software engineer, Energy Systems Test Area
“In early 1969, when I was a boy, my uncle visited the Johnson Space Center and brought back astronaut and mission photos of the recently completed Apollo 8 lunar orbiting mission. Those photos, coupled with a Saturn V rocket model I assembled, and the Time Life records and books about the Apollo space program my parents purchased for me, sparked my imagination. I knew I wanted to work for NASA one day. It wasn’t until many years later that that dream became a reality, when I joined NASA’s co-op program for college students during my second attempt to become an aeronautical engineer. After I graduated college, I began working full time as a civil servant engineer at Johnson.”
– David Fletcher, NASA lead, Gateway-Ready Avionics Integration Lab
David Fletcher (center) with his daughters Jessica (left) and Erica (right). Image courtesy of David Fletcher
“I remember watching Star Trek and Star Wars as a kid with my dad. I found some of his college notes in a box one day and thought the small, neat print on graph paper pads was really pretty. He went to the University of Texas at Austin to study astrophysics and engineering, but he never got to finish. Fast forward to 2022 and I find myself in Houston for an unknown amount of time, so I decided to go out and make some friends. I met a woman at a Geeky Game Night, and I learned that she was a food scientist at NASA! After talking some more, she told me to send her my resume. Later that week I received a call to set up an interview. I’m still in awe of how that one chance connection led me to my childhood dream of working at NASA.”
– Kristin Dillon, document/IT specialist, Space Food Systems Laboratory
“I grew up in a small agricultural village in India. My first introduction to spaceflight was reading Russian cosmonauts’ translated accounts of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project as a young girl. I am still not sure whether my father picked that book for me on a whim or with a grand dream for his daughter, but it certainly had me hooked. However, I found my true calling to make human spaceflight safer and more efficient after witnessing the Columbia mishap. India, at the time, did not have a human spaceflight program. Thus started a 20-year-long grand adventure of seeking opportunities, pursuing them, immigrating to the United States, and finding my path to NASA, which culminated in a Pathways internship at Johnson.”
– Poonampreet Kaur Josan, three-time Pathways intern, currently supporting the Human Health and Performance Directorate Habitability and Human Factors Branch
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By NASA
2 min read
Hubble Traces Star Formation in a Nearby Nebula
NASA, ESA, and L. C. Johnson (Northwestern University); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) NGC 261 blooms a brilliant ruby red against a myriad of stars in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Discovered on Sept. 5, 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, this nebula is located in one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic companions, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The ionized gas blazing from within this diffuse region marks NGC 261 as an emission nebula. It is home to numerous stars hot enough to irradiate surrounding hydrogen gas, causing the cloud to emit a pinkish-red glow.
This inset image shows the location of NGC 261 within the Small Magellanic Cloud. NASA, ESA, L. C. Johnson (Northwestern University), and ESO/VISTA VMC; Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) Hubble turned its keen eye toward NGC 261 to investigate how efficiently stars form in molecular clouds, which are extremely dense and compact regions of gas and dust. These clouds often consist of large amounts of molecular hydrogen — cold areas where most stars form. However, measuring this raw fuel of star formation in stellar nurseries is a challenge because molecular hydrogen doesn’t radiate easily. Since it is difficult to detect, scientists instead trace other molecules present in the molecular clouds.
The SMC hosts a gas-rich environment of young stars along with trace amounts of carbon monoxide (CO), a chemical correlated with hydrogen and often used to identify the presence of such clouds. Using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), Hubble imaged these stars in the southwest portion of the SMC where NGC 261 resides. The combined power of ACS and WFC3 allowed scientists to closely examine the nebula’s star-forming properties through its CO content at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. This research helps astronomers better understand how stars form in our home galaxy and others in our galactic neighborhood.
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2024 Editor Michelle Belleville Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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By NASA
14 Min Read The Making of Our Alien Earth: The Undersea Volcanoes of Santorini, Greece
The expedition team and crew prepare to deploy Nereid Under Ice (NUI) into the sea. The following expedition marks the third installment of NASA Astrobiology’s fieldwork series, the newly rebranded Our Alien Earth, streaming on NASA+. Check out all three episodes following teams of astrobiologists from the lava fields of Holuhraun, Iceland, to the Isua Greenstone Belt of Greenland, and finally, the undersea volcanoes of Santorini, Greece. And stay tuned for the lava tubes of Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 2025.
THE VOYAGE BEGINS
My career at NASA has always felt like a mad scientist’s concoction of equal parts hard work, perseverance, absurd luck, and happenstance. It was due to this mad blend that I suddenly found myself on the deck of a massive tanker ship in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, watching a team of windburnt scientists, engineers, and sailors through my camera lens as they wrestled with a 5,000lb submersible hanging in the air.
The expedition team and crew prepare to deploy Nereid Under Ice (NUI) into the sea. “Let it out, Molly, slack off a little bit…” shouts deck boss Mario Fernandez, as he coordinates the dozen people maneuvering the vehicle. It’s a delicate dance as the hybrid remotely operated vehicle (ROV), Nereid Under Ice (NUI), is hoisted off the ship and deployed into the sea. “Tagline slips, line breaks… you’ve got a 5,000lb wrecking ball,” recounts Mario in an interview later that day.
How did I get here?
A few years ago I found myself roaming the poster halls of the Astrobiology Science Conference in Bellevue, Washington, struggling to decipher the jargon of a dozen disciplines doing their best to share their discoveries; phrases like lipid biomarkers, anaerobic biospheres, and macromolecular emergence floated past me as I walked. I felt like a Peanuts character listening to an adult speak.
Until I stumbled upon a poster by Dr. Richard Camilli entitled, Risk-Aware Adaptive Sampling for the Search for Life in Ocean Worlds. I was quickly enthralled in a whirlwind of icy moons, fleets of deep sea submersible vehicles, and life at sea.
Dr. Richard Camilli, principal investigator of a research expedition to explore undersea volcanoes off the coast of Santorini. “Are you free in November?”
“Absolutely,” I replied without checking a single calendar.
Five months and three flights later, I arrived at the port of Lavrio, Greece, as Dr. Camilli and his team were unloading their suite of vehicles from gigantic shipping crates onto the even more massive research vessel. I stocked up on motion sickness tablets, said a silent farewell to land, and boarded the ship destined for the undersea Kolumbo volcano.
Greece is a great place to study geology, because it’s a kind of supermarket of natural disasters.
Dr. Paraskevi NomikoU
University of Athens
The expedition sets out to sea as the sun sets in the distance. LIFE AT SEA
Documenting astrobiology fieldwork has taken me to some pretty remote and rough places. Sleeping in wooden shacks in Iceland without running water and electricity, or bundled up in a zero-degree sleeping bag in a tent while being buffeted by gale force winds in the wilderness of Greenland. But life at sea? Life at sea is GOOD.
Filmmaker Mike Toillion takes a selfie, holding up a peace sign with members of the science team. From left to right: NASA Astrobiology/Mike Toillion Mike Toillion, creator of Our Alien Earth, taking a selfie with members of the glider team. From left to right: Matt Walter and Gideon Billings of the autonomous sampling team inside the ship’s control room.
I was fortunate to have a personal cabin all to myself: a set of bunk beds, a small bathroom with a shower, and a small desk with plenty of outlets for charging my gear. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the mess hall. Aside from a freshly rotated menu of three hot meals a day, it was open 24/7 with a constant lineup of snacks to keep bellies full and morale high. This was luxury fieldwork. The ability to live, work, and socialize all in the same place would make this trip special in its own right, and allowed me to really get to know the team and capture every angle of this incredibly complex and multi-faceted expedition.
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The ship in the port of Lavrio, Greece. The team will spend two full days docked here while preparing for the voyage ahead. NASA Astrobiology/Mike Toillion SEARCHING FOR LIFE ON OCEAN WORLDS
“The goal of this program is cooperative exploration with under-actuated vehicles in hazardous environments,” explains Dr. Camilli as we stand on the bow of the ship, the sun beginning to set in the distance. “These vehicles work cooperatively in order to explore areas that are potentially too dangerous or too far away for humans to go.”
This is the problem at hand with exploring icy ocean worlds like Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The tremendous distance between Earth and Europa means we will barely be able to communicate and control vehicles that we send to the surface, and will face even more difficulty once those vehicles dive below the ice. This makes Earth’s ocean a perfect testbed for developing autonomous, intelligent robotic explorers.
“I’ve always been struck at how parallel ocean exploration and space exploration is,” says Brian Williams, professor from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. “Once you go through the surface, you can’t communicate. So, somehow you have to embody the key insights of a scientist, to be able to look and see: is that evidence of life?”
One of the gliders, an autonomous scouting vehicle equipped with multple sensors to map the seafloor and report back to the ship. NASA Astrobiology/Mike Toillion MEET THE FLEET
Exploring anywhere in space begins with a few simple steps: first, you need to get a general map of the area, which is typically done by deploying orbiters around a celestial body. The next step is to get a closer look, by launching lander and rover missions to the surface. Finally, in order to understand the location best, you need to bring samples back to Earth to study in greater detail.
“So you can think of what we’re doing here as being very parallel, that the ship is like the orbiter and is giving us a broad view of the Kolumbo volcano, right? Once we do that map, then we need to be able to explore interesting places to collect samples. So, the gliders are navigating around places that look promising from what the ship told us. And then, it looks to identify places where we might want to send NUI. NUI is very capable in terms of doing the samples, but it can’t move around nearly as much. And so, we finally put NUI at the places where the gliders thought that they were interesting.”
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The expedition team works into the night preparing NUI for its upcoming mission to the Kolumbo volcano. NASA Astrobiology/Mike Toillion THE SCIENTIST’S ROBOTIC APPRENTICE
As the espresso machine in the mess hall whirred away pouring out a much needed shot of caffeine, I sat with Eric Timmons, one of the expedition’s computer science engineers. Eric wears a few hats on the ship, but today we are discussing automated mission planning, the first step to true autonomy in robotic exploration.
“In any sort of scientific mission, you’re going to have a list of goals, each with their own set of steps, and a limited amount of time to achieve them. And so, Kirk works on automating that.” Kirk is the nickname of one of the many algorithms involved in the team’s automated mission planning. It’s joined by other algorithms, all named after Star Trek characters, collectively known as Enterprise, each responsible for different aspects of planning a mission and actively adapting to new mission parameters.
Dr. Richard Camilli explains further: “Basically, we have scientists onboard the ship that are feeding policies to these automated planners. [The planners] then take those policies plus historical information, the oceanographic context, and new information being transmitted by the vehicles here and now; they take all that information, and combine it to construct a mission that gets to the scientific deliverables, while also being safe.”
These are areas that humans aren’t designed to go to. I guess the best analogy would be like hang gliding in Midtown Manhattan at night.
Dr. richard camilli
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
OK, let’s recap the story so far: the ship’s sonar and other instruments create a general map of the Kolumbo volcano. That information, along with data from previous missions, is fed to Enterprise’s team of algorithms, which generates a mission for the gliders. The gliders are deployed, and using their sensors, provide higher-fidelity data about the area and transmit that knowledge back to the ship. The automated mission planners take in this new data, and revise their mission plan, ranking potential sites of scientific interest, which are then passed onto NUI, which will conduct its own mission to explore these sites, and potentially sample anything of interest.
DIVE, DIVE, DIVE
After a few days on the ship, the routine of donning my steel-toed boots and hard hat when walking around the deck has started to become second nature. My drone skills have greatly improved, as the magnetic field produced by the ship and its instruments forced me to take-off and land manually, carefully guiding the drone in and around the many hazards of the vessel. This morning, however, I’ve been invited to step off the ship for the first time to get a first-hand look at deploying the gliders. Angelos Mallios from the glider team leads me down into the bowels of the ship to the lower decks, as we arrive at a door that opens to the outside of the ship, waves lapping about six feet below. A zodiac pulls up to the door and we descend down a ladder into the small boat.
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Riding in the zodiac with the glider team, led by Angelos Mallios. NASA Astrobiology/Mike Toillion Meanwhile, the rest of the glider team is on the main deck of the ship, lifting the gliders with a large, motorized crane, and lowering them onto the surface of the water. The zodiac team approached to detach the glider and safely set it out into the sea, while I dipped a monopod-mounted action camera in and out of the water to capture the process. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this would become some of my favorite footage of the trip, sunlight dancing off the surface of the waves, while the gliders floated and dove beneath.
Angelos’ radio began to chatter. Eric Timmons was onboard the ship ready to command the gliders to begin their mission plan assigned by Enterprise. A moment passed and the yellow fin of the glider dipped below the water’s surface and disappeared.
Angelos Mallios from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, leans out of a zodiac to deploy a glider, an autonomous vehicle and the forward scout for the expedition. NUI VERSUS THE VOLCANO
The following day, it was time to see the star of the show in action; the expedition team was ready to deploy the aforementioned 5,000lb wrecking ball, NUI. The gliders had been exploring the surrounding area day and night, using their suite of sensors to detect areas of scientific interest. Since this mission is about searching for life, the gliders know that warmer areas could indicate hydrothermal vent activity; a literal hotspot for life in the deep ocean. Kirk, along with the science planner algorithm, Spock, determined a list of possible candidates that fit that exact description.
“There’s always a bit of tension in the operations, where, do you go strike out in an area that is unstudied and potentially come back with nothing? Or do you go to a site that you know and try to understand it a little bit more, that kind of incremental advance?” Dr. Camilli pauses to take a quick swig of sparkling water after a long day of diving operations, as he recounts a moment in the control room earlier that day. All the scientists onboard this expedition are extremely skilled and knowledgable, and this mission is asking them to put aside their instincts, and follow the suggestions of computer algorithms; a hard pill to swallow for some.
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Underwater footage from Nereid Under Ice, showing a thriving community on the sea floor, including a never before seen species. NASA Astrobiology/Mike Toillion and WHOI “We stuck with the Spock program, and it paid great dividends. And all of the scientists were amazed at what they saw. The first site that we went to was spectacular. The second site we went to was spectacular. Each of the five sites that it identified as interesting were interesting, and they were each interesting in a different way; totally different environments.”
Interesting, in this case, was quite the understatement. As the expedition team and I crowded into the ship’s control room to look at the camera feeds transmitted by NUI, now fully deployed to the seafloor, audible gasps erupted from multiple people. Bubbles filled the monitor as live fumaroles, active vents from the volcano, were pouring out heat and chemical-rich fluid into the water. Thick, microbial mats covered the surrounding rock, and multicellular lifeforms dotted the landscape. The expedition team had found a live hydrothermal vent, and life thriving around it.
SOUVENIRS FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” recalls Casey Machado, expedition lead and the main pilot for Nereid Under Ice (NUI). Casey is sitting in an office chair surrounded by glowing monitors, a joystick in their left hand, and a gaming controller in their right. Since NUI is a hybrid ROV, it can be controlled manually from the ship by remote, or receive autonomous instructions from the Enterprise mission planners. Today, the team plans on manually controlling NUI to retrieve samples from the first site of interest.
NUI is a strange looking vehicle. Only a small section of its body is watertight, where many of its critical components are housed. The remainder is fairly open, and upon arriving at the first site recommended by Spock, the front of the ROV opens up its front double doors to reveal a multi-jointed manipulator arm, stereo camera set, and other instruments. I’m instantly reminded of the space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, which had a similar mechanism.
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Casey Machado, pilot of the hybrid ROV Nereid Under Ice (NUI), pilots the manipulator arm to take a rock sample. NASA Astrobiology/Mike Toillion Casey deftly maneuvers each joint of the arm to approach a rock covered in microbial mats. The end of NUI’s arm is equipped with two sampling instruments: a claw-like grabbing mechanism and a vacuum-like hose called the “slurp gun”. The end of the arm twists and turns as Machado aligns it with the rock, eventually opening and closing it around the target. With a gentle pull, the rock comes loose, and with a few more careful manipulations places it delicately into NUI’s sample cache. I offer a high-five, which Casey nonchalantly returns like the whole task was nothing.
TEACHING A ROBOT TO FISH
At this point, the expedition team has collected dozens of samples and achieved multiple engineering milestones, enough to fill years’ worth of scientific papers, but they are far from finished. A true mission to an ocean world will have to be pilotless, as Dr. Gideon Billings from MIT explains: “They need to operate without any human intervention. They need to be able to understand the scene through perception and then make a decision about how they want to manipulate to take a sample or achieve a task.”
Gideon sits in the control room to the left of the piloting station, working alongside Casey as they prepare to demonstrate NUI’s automated sampling capabilities. His laptop screen shows a live 3D-model of the craft, its doors open, arm extended. Projected around the craft is a 3D reconstruction, or point cloud, of the seafloor created from the stereo camera pair mounted inside the vehicle. Similarly to how our brains take the two visual feeds from both of our eyes to see three-dimensionally, a stereo camera pair uses two cameras to achieve the same effect. By clicking on the model and moving its position in the software, NUI performs the same action thousands of meters under the ocean.
Shared autonomy between the automated sampling team and the ROV Nereid Under Ice. “That is shared autonomy, where you could imagine a pilot indicating a desired pose
for the arm to move to, but then a planner taking over and coming up with the path that the arm should move to reach that goal. And then, the pilot just essentially hitting a button and the arm following that path.”
Over the course of multiple dives, Gideon tested various sampling techniques, directing the manipulator arm to use its claw-like device to grab different tools and perform a variety of tasks. “We were able to project the point cloud into that scene, and then command the arm to grab a push core and move it into a location within that 3D reconstruction. We verified that that location matched up. That showed the viability of an autonomous system.” This seemingly small victory is a huge step towards exploring planets beyond Earth. Since this expedition, the engineering team has not only improved this shared autonomy system, but has also implemented a natural language interface, allowing a user to use their normal speaking voice to give commands to the ROV, further blurring the lines between reality and science fiction.
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The sun rises over the Mediterranean Sea on the final day of the research cruise. NASA Astrobiology/Mike Toillion SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE SEA
I cannot help but envy the life of those who chose to make the ocean their place of work. The time I’ve spent with oceanographers has me questioning all my life choices; clearly they knew something I didn’t.
Watching the sunrise every morning, peering through the murky depths of the deep sea, unlocking the secrets of Earth’s final frontier. All in a day’s work for Dr. Richard Camilli and his team of intrepid explorers.
Watch Our Alien Earth and The Undersea Volcanoes of Santorini, Greece on NASA+ and follow the full story of this incredible expedition.
Watch Our Alien Earth on NASA+
Panorama of a sunrise at sea. View the full article
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