ANALOG-1 ISS – The first part of an analogue mission to guide ESA’s robotic moon exploration efforts

Kjetil Wormnes,Lukas Hann,Riccardo Pozzobon,Emiel Den Exter,Levin Gerdes,Erica Luzzi,Chiara Lombardi,Leonardo Cencetti,Thomas Krueger,Edmundo Ferreira,Philippe Schoonejans,Jessica Grenouilleau,Stephen Ennis,Francesco Sauro,Aaron Pereira,Matteo Massironi,Sebastián Martín ,A Fortunato ,Samuel J Payler ,A P Rossi ,F Van Der Hulst ,William M Carey

doi:10.1515/astro-2022-0002

Abstract

Abstract The European Space Agency’s ANALOG-1 experiment is the culmination of 12 distinct METERON experiments carried out since 2011. These all address aspects of teleoperating a robotic asset from an orbital platform, i.e., technical implementation, user interfaces, autonomy and operations. The ANALOG-1 technology demonstration and operations concept experiment is based upon the surface mission scenario segment of the notional EL3 sample return mission. This segment focuses on the control of a lunar surface robotic asset from the Earth and from the Lunar Gateway. The experiment is taking place in two parts, with the first successfully completed from the ISS in November 2019. It assessed the effectiveness of a state-of-the-art robotic control interface to control a complex mobile robot from orbit, as well as evaluating the scientific interactions, during robotic-assisted geology exploration, between crew in orbit and scientists on the ground. Luca Parmitano operated the robot while he was on the ISS. For this experiment, a complex control station had been installed on the ISS. The experiment demonstrated the advantage of having an immersive control station and high level of robotic dexterity, with Luca finishing all his assigned and secondary geology targets ahead of time.

Highlights

In November of 2019 a rover was navigating around a hangar at the old Valkenburg air base in the Netherlands, ANALOG-1 is the culmination of the METERON (Carey et al 2012) programme that has been running at the European Space Agency for over a decade
ANALOG-1 built on all the knowledge gained in METERON from the internal European Space Agency (ESA) study carried out in 2009, through the 12 METERON experiments performed since OPSCOM-1 in 2012 (Martin et al 2013), to the HOPE-1 and HOPE-2 (Gingras et al 2020) experiments of 2017 and 2019, all addressing various aspects of teleoperating a robotic asset from orbit
As the focus of ANALOG-1 International Space Station (ISS) was largely to represent with high fidelity the challenges of controlling a robotic asset on a planetary surface from an astronaut on-board a spacecraft, the experiment must be declared very successful with respect to the objectives that were addressed

Summary

Introduction

In November of 2019 a rover was navigating around a hangar at the old Valkenburg air base in the Netherlands, ANALOG-1 is the culmination of the METERON (Carey et al 2012) programme that has been running at the European Space Agency for over a decade. The second part of ANALOG-1 will see the rover in an outdoor lunar analogue at Mount Etna, but without involving an astronaut on-board the ISS. This part was planned to happen in summer 2020 together with the DLR’s ARCHES campaign but has been postponed until 2022 due. Duration of traverses, interaction with operations teams (about path planning, science context, sampling). This objective relating to comparison between ground control and orbital operations eflciency control was not addressed in this ISS part of the experiment due to the highly constrained time available for the experiment. As part of the ARCHES activity (Wedler et al 2021)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion