Planetary Exploration Rebooted: New Ways of Exploring the Moon, Mars and Beyond

During the past 50 years, we have learned to explore and work in space, visiting the Moon, Mars, and other destinations. Much of what we know about the Solar System we owe to robotic spacecraft, landers, planetary rovers, and human explorers. As we look to the future, however, there is ample opportunity to reinvent planetary exploration: to develop new techniques and systems that will enable greater public involvement and provide greater science.

Dr Fong will present some of the ways in which the NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) is working to "reboot" planetary exploration. He will describe how IRG has been developing and field testing robotic systems for human exploration. These robots are designed to perform work that cannot, or should not, be performed by humans.   He will provide an overview of IRG's efforts to develop automated planetary mapping systems. These systems are needed to process the enormous amount of digital remote sensing data that NASA is collecting with spacecraft such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, making extensive use of computer vision and high-performance cloud and supercomputing.    He will also discuss how IRG is working to enable the public to more easily and actively participate in exploration.  To do this, they rely heavily on neo-geography tools, such as Google Earth, and immersive panoramas. For example, IRG collaborated with Google to release "Mars in Google Earth" and "Moon in Google Earth",  and is using GigaPan for citizen science, as part of simulated lunar robotic and crew missions.

Speaker:  Dr. Terry Fong, NASA Ames