Asset Planning

Mission Asset and Resource Simulation

Synopsis: Data acquisition for the traverse planning and asset management tool
Institution (PI): Austrian Space Forum (Gernot Groemer)
Responsible on-site: Sebastian Hettrich & Alejandra Sans

Description

MARS (Mission Asset and Resource Simulation) is a mission planning software tool, based upon proper mapping and digitalising of the regions of interest and a GDL based software for the optimisation of EVAs.
This software is designed to calculate the optimised path through various types of terrain, the time needed, to verify if the target point is accessible and if the total EVA time is still in the range of the lifetime of the on-board consumables like power and water supply. It will use the digitalised altitude maps, terrain features and a catalogue of physical parameters as an input together with the starting point and the experiment locations. The algorithm then calculates the fastest and safest path between two points on the map under consideration of taking the easiest traversable terrain, the smallest incline and the minimal distance while also calculating the length of the path and the time needed to walk along that path.
This will allow to avoid difficult or dangerous locations as well as to ensure a better estimation on the total EVA time needed in order to a more frictionless course of action and enabling a maximum of time to the each of the experiments done during the EVA. The software will be tested for the first time at the Dachstein Cave Mission. We test the code itself via comparing theoretical calculated values with the actual experimental ones and to gain additional experimental data for a further improvement of the software tool.

Experiment Data