Month: May 2023

Crew 261 EVA Report 05-05-2023

EVA # 7

Author: James Burk, Commander (with inputs from XO Aline Decadi)

Purpose of EVA:
Test of drones at Compass Rock.
Build experience for longer-range EVAs.
HabCom training of crewmembers to support longer-range EVAs.
Gathering of EVA traverse data using Meshtastic devices

Start time: 8:37 AM

End time: 10:35 AM

Narrative:

Overview of EVA
In preparation for the rest of the mission, this EVA was designed by the crew to build experience and confidence with long-range EVAs, including demonstration of a long rover traverse with frequent SOC checks to monitor battery capacity. We also wanted to practice flying drones with EVA suits on, using Compass Rock as a recognizable landmark that is easy to see on a drone viewfinder. We also planned to give other crewmembers back in the Hab time working as HabCom and learning how to support longer EVAs.

During this EVA both crewmembers carried two Meshtastic devices each (one T-Beam and one T-Echo) to gather data from the field to test the technology overall including its range from the Hab.

Commander Burk and XO Decadi drove with Curiosity rover to Compass Rock with intermediate waypoints: drive to Cow Dung Road, then North to Galileo Road, then East/Southeast to Compass Rock. Walk on foot to explore area.

It took us some time to find the right turn on Galileo Road (see Issues), and once we did and drove to Compass Rock, we disembarked and prepared our drones for flight.

The Atmosphinder electronics payload was included on EVA-7. The air quality monitor was added, which reports PM 2.5, PM 10, and NH3 every 10 seconds. This sensor data, along with the pressure, humidity, temperature, wind (anemometer), GPS, and battery, was logged at 1 Hz to the microcontroller’s microSD card. The data will be analyzed at a later date. Progress on Atmosphinder including adapting and installing both sail assemblies, affixing an improved towing method, and coding the mechanised sail trim motors.

The plan was for both Commander Burk and XO Decadi to practice individually flying drones in their EVA suits with their associated difficulties (gloves, low visibility due to helmet, etc.) Upon arriving at the site, XO Decadi could not get her drone to power up. Commander Burk was able to deploy his drone (an off-the-shelf DJI Mavic Air 2) successfully and flew it for approx. 15-20 mins, making multiple passes over Compass Rock, and the EVA team and our rover.

Just as he was preparing to land the drone, he lost sight of it and attempted to use the “Return Home” feature, which he had tested successfully that morning back in the vicinity of the Musk Observatory (within the simulation protocols).

According to Commander Burk, the Return Home feature seemed off because he could not see the drone, even though the controls stated it was at distance 0 from home and landing. He aborted the Return Home feature, fearing that the “Home” waypoint was still set to the Musk Observatory (which was out of range of the drone’s battery), and attempted to manually pilot the drone back to him. Due to the limited visibility of his EVA gear, he was not able to ascertain position of the drone from only the viewfinder, and attempted to fly the drone using the mountains and Compass Rock as guide points. Long story short, the drone ran out of battery and he was forced to land it before he was able to sight its location visually. Commander Burk was under the impression that, because he had lost sight of the drone while it was north of Compass Rock, that it landed in that area.

After this happened, Commander Burk and XO Decadi packed everything up in the rover and began returning to the Hab on Galileo road, stopping briefly to look for the drone north of Compass Rock. Unable to find the drone, they returned to the Hab via Galileo Road and Cow Dung Road, briefly stopping at Marble Ritual to pick up an interesting animal bone that the previous day’s EVA had sighted.

The EVA team returned to the Hab safely, without the drone. During the debriefing session, the Crew Journalist requested that Commander Burk choose a name for the drone based on Greek mythology. He chose the name “Icarus”, after the story of the young boy who was given wings, and then flew too close to the Sun.

Later on in the day, Crew Engineer Julian Villa-Massone was able to both pinpoint the GPS coordinates of the downed drone using Commander Burk’s DJI controller and smartphone app. Villa-Massone then flew his own drone from the Musk Observatory and imaged the Icarus Drone at its landing spot, to enable future EVA planning to rescue it.

Issues Experienced During EVA 7
[Procedural] The Garmin units we took were not properly configured to show the coordinate system used on the official EVA map.
[Technical] XO Decadi’s drone batteries did not work despite being plugged in all night. After the EVA, she determined that the issue was due to her EU travel adapter (with the drone charger) not being fully seated in her stateroom’s wall outlet.
[Technical] The turn onto Galileo Road from Cow Dung Road is not a T-Intersection as shown on the map. It’s more like a half-oval off the road (almost like a turnaround for trucks, and the intersection to Galileo as off that half-oval. This turn off was hard to spot driving north.
[Technical] XO Decadi determined that the coordinate grid on the version of the official EVA map does not appear to be 100% precise.
[Procedural] Commander Burk flew a drone despite the high wind gusts, which caused the Icarus drone to be blown off course and visibility lost.
[Procedural] Commander Burk was not familiar with how to find & use DJI Fly app’s feature to “Find My Drone” which could have been used on-site to locate it.

Outcomes
As a lesson learnt from this experiment, we concluded that the map shall not be used as a primary tool while navigating in exploration areas, but rather as an indicator. The good solution is to focus on a detailed preparation upfront, using satellite imaging to visualize the shape of the road and understand the terrain landforms, combined with the use of waypoint-enabled navigation devices on the field.
Another outcome from this EVA was that the SOC of the Curiosity rover decreased in a non-predictive way: in ten minutes, it decreased very quickly from 100% to 85%, then it stayed at 66% for a very long time. As a lesson-learnt, it could be useful to test the rover under 60% in the vicinity of the MDRS station (for safety purposes) to predict the SOC. This could help to learn/ predict if the SOC goes very fast from 60% to 40% or even 20% or if it stays stable for a certain time around 50%-60%; and what are the parameters that can influence the SOC while in a long-range EVA. As the battery consumption may be different for each rover, we would recommend performing this test on the 4 rovers and provide the results to the mission support.
Mission Support provided a higher-resolution EVA map that we will begin using to plan.
Drone flights should not be done when there is danger of high wind gusts.
Drone flights should reference wind predictions at different altitudes using resources like Windy.com so that appropriate & safe altitudes are used for flights.

Destination: Compass Rock.

Coordinates (use UTM WGS 84): 520000 E, 4252000 N

Participants:
James Burk (Commander) (EVA Leader), Aline Decate (XO).

Road(s) and routes per MDRS Map: Drive to Cow Dung Road, then North to Galileo Road, then East/SouthEast to Compass Rock. Walk on foot to explore area.

Mode of travel: Rover

Vehicles you will be using (If applicable): Rover (Curiosity)

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Crew 261 EVA Report 05–05–2023

EVA # 8

Author: James Burk, Commander (with inputs from XO Aline Decadi)

Purpose of EVA: Exploration of Area for Geologic Purposes

Start time: 11:25 PM

End time: 1:00 PM

Narrative:

EVA-8 conducted exploration of Area for Geologic Purposes. The purpose was also to train for communication between the crew and HabCom.  The crew walked to the MDRS sign, then headed due Southeast. The crew found various traces of ancient civilizations on the field.

The crew in the field had a positive experience overall, but suffered from some communication issues between themselves and between the HabCom team (led by GreenHab Officer Cecile Renaud with support from Commander James Burk).  After the EVA, the crew hosted another long debriefing session, as was done yesterday.  Our crew feels these debriefing sessions are very important to provide an open forum for discussion and also to help assist all crewmembers with building their analog astronaut experience, skills, and understanding of safe procedures.

Issues Experienced During EVA 8
1. [Procedural] Many Comms-related human factors process issues, including lack of use of different channels, lack of headset troubleshooting, not pausing after hitting the button on the radio before talking, and cross-talk between EVA crewmembers.  All of these issues compounded and caused HabCom to have diminished understanding of the situation, including the perceived health status of crew members.
2. [Technical] Crew Engineer Julian Villa-Massone’s radio gear was acting temperamental and it was hard for him to hear HabCom.  On the other end, HabCom’s receiving of Villa-Massone included heavy breathing (due to microphone too close to mouth) which caused HabCom to believe that Villa-Massone was struggling with breath often.
2. [Procedural] HSO was on the EVA and did her job by observing and checking in on EVA crewmembers, who were all nominal throughout the EVA, but because of the above Comms issues, the information on crew health was asked for by HabCom and not received.  As a result, HabCom continued to assume that Villa-Massone was having difficulty and responded accordingly with Concern.

Outcomes
We spent a lot of time talking about correct Comms procedures, including use and troubleshooting of radios, using brief and factual communication, and ensuring that HabCom requests are better attended to by the EVA Lead and HSO.
We should provide more buffer time between EVAs to allow for debriefing sessions, which the crew is finding very valuable.
Crew members should take into account who is doing which role and how they communicate & like to receive communication.  This is especially important because we have crewmembers from different cultures where English is not their primary language.
XO Decadi organized and held a training session for emergency procedures in the field, based on the past two days’ EVA experiences and her personal experiences on AMIDEE-18 and with the European Space Agency’s Ariane projects, with the purpose to expose what kind of hazards may happen on the field and how to detect and make decisions on the most appropriate “way for action”. Then we practiced how to remove the helmet/ backpack in different degraded situations as quick as possible.
Addition of Safety Check to Pre-EVA checklist to ensure crewmembers have acclimation with their gear to carry out the emergency contingency procedures we trained on today.
We agreed to plan out EVAs earlier in the day so that the entire crew can be involved.

Destination: Due Southeast of Hab, past MDRS sign.

Coordinates (use UTM WGS 84): 518400 E, 4250600 N

Participants: Julien Villa-Massone (EVA Leader), Kris Davidson (Crew Journalist), Audrey Derobertmasure (HSO).

Road(s) and routes per MDRS Map: Walk to MDRS sign, then head due Southeast.

Mode of travel: Walking

Crew 261 EVA Report 04-05-2023

EVA # 5

Author: James Burk, Commander

Purpose of EVA: Initial Meshtastic Testing + Safety Drill

Start time: 9:00 AM

End time: 10:33 AM

Narrative:

Overview of EVA
Today’s EVA was designed to allow four of our crew to get additional experience with driving rovers and exploring areas within 1km of the Hab, while also testing out our Meshtastic devices for the first time on this mission. Each of the four EVA team members carried a Meshtastic device on their person, and also carried a fifth device in the bed of Perseverance.

The primary objective of the EVA was completed and the devices captured data, which you can see visualized below. The crew did not make it to their planned destination of Gateway to Candor, although that was not a critical part of the EVA. The goal was to give the crewmembers more experience with Rover, Comms, and EVA procedures overall.

Safety Drill
During the last part of the EVA, the crew experienced an anomaly. While exploring an area approximately west of Pooh’s Corner, Executive Officer Aline Decadi started to smell what she described as a “burning plastic smell”. This was confirmed by GreenHab Officer Cecile Renaud who also smelled what she described as a “sulfur smell”. Fearing that XO Decadi’s backpack components were burning, the EVA team quickly worked to take off her helmet and suit. By the time they had done that, XO Decadi started to feel ill, and felt like she was going to faint. She was assisted back to the rovers by the three other crewmembers: GreenHab Officer Renaud, HSO Audrey Derobertmasure, and Crew Journalist Kris Davidson.

The crew has been carrying a Garmin inReach mini 2 on all EVAs, which has a custom “MDRS Assistance Required” feature, that is meant to alert the Hab, Mission Support or local county EMS in the case of an emergency or when assistance is needed. In this case, GreenHab Officer Renaud triggered the feature immediately and it was seen by HabCom within a couple minutes on our custom EVA monitor.

The crew experienced issues with comms throughout the EVA, which compounded the situation. At one point, one of the two rovers drove off while the other had not yet started, which was due to Comms issues.

The EVA team then proceeded back to the Hab safely.

The team performed a debriefing session and many issues were raised and discussed. A list of them is below. We also created a set of “Outcomes”, or recommendations, for both our crew’s future operations and the program in general.

Overall, the crew felt this was a great learning experience. The team debriefing session, while sometimes quite heated, overall was a very productive and constructive discussion.

Issues Experienced During EVA 5

1. [Technical] XO Decadi’s EVA gear seemed to create a smell that made her sick, briefly.
2. [Medical] XO Decadi experienced light-headedness due to issue #1. At one point, she was leaning hard on the other crewmember and felt like she was going to faint.
3. [Procedural] When individual crewmembers experienced Comms issues, not all crewmembers worked together to resolve them.
4. [Procedural] Rovers should stay together at all times, and certainly within sight of each other. One rover should never be out of sight of the other.
5. [Procedural] Crew members should be careful not to talk at the same time, because it interferes with Comms and makes it so nobody is heard. This happened often on this EVA.
6. [Procedural] Crew members should switch to Channel 2 when having comms issues between each other. One crewmember stayed on Channel 1 during the entire EVA, despite the Comms issues.
7. [Procedural] Removing XO Decadi’s helmet in an emergency situation was done in a suboptimal way.
8. [Technical] Our Garmin device did not trigger an email to Mission Support, as was designed. We are investigating this problem.
9. [Procedural] It is safer to go to the furthest point of the EVA and then work your way back closer to the Hab. Instead, the EVA team first stopped near Marble Ritual and then north of Pooh’s Corner, with the intent to eventually get to Gateway to Candor. Instead they should have driven all the way to Gateway and worked their way back in the direction of the Hab.

Outcomes

• Air flow of a backpack can be left on while the helmet is removed. In today’s case it was rightly switched off by one crew member while two others were removing the helmet, because of the nature of the perceived issue (burning component in backpack). In other emergency cases, keeping air flow on would be desirable
• We need more hand signals, especially to communicate comms outages or when driving a rover with a sick crewmember in passenger seat (ie, “Are you ok?”)
• Crewmembers should always carry water on their person, and there should be at least one emergency water bottle carried by the EVA crew in the rover. By utilizing a carabiner clip with a water bottle that has a loop at the top, a crewmember can easily stow it on their person so that both hands are free.
• EVA members should have a mandatory water break every 20-30 mins, to keep ahead of any thirstiness or dehydration. We have noticed this can creep up on you quickly, and we keep powering through minor thirstiness only to suffer severe thirst later in the EVAs. Often, peer pressure or psychology prevents people from being the first to pause the EVA for reasons like this.
• When two rovers are driving, the person driving the rover should communicate with the other rover driver, and the other two (passenger) crew members should remain quiet.
• There should be a mandatory comm check at the beginning of every traverse. In today’s case, one rover lead was trying to communicate with the other, but they were not heard.
• The EVA suits should support rapid removal of helmet and backpack battery in the case of an emergency.
• EVA teams should carry sugar packets to help ill crew members. In today’s case that would have helped.
• For our crew’s HSO, the threshold for breaking sim would have been an actual fainting, not an “almost” fainting. In today’s case, the incident did not meet the threshold, although we broke the sim anyway due to the backpack smell issue.
• We should perform drills to practice self-removal of the helmet and backpack in an emergency.

Destination: Gateway to Candor.

Coordinates (use UTM WGS 84): 519000 E, 4251700 N

Participants: Aline Decadi (XO) (EVA Leader), Audrey Derobertmasure (HSO), Cecile Renaud (GreenHab Officer), Kris Davidson (Crew Journalist)

Road(s) and routes per MDRS Map: Drive to Cow Dung Road, then drive north to Gateway to Candor. Walk on foot to explore area.

Mode of travel: Rovers (Perseverance and Spirit)

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Crew 261 EVA Report 04–05–2023

EVA # 6

Author: James Burk, Commander

Purpose of EVA: Testing of Atmosphinder prototype with wind sails and improvements since EVA #4

Start time: 12:00 PM

End time: 2:00 PM

Narrative:
This EVA was conducted during extremely strong (~30-52 kph) winds outside the Hab, which were very desirable for the type of testing that we aimed to perform.

EVA-6 conducted Atmosphinder testing using the half-sized robot (~1 m diameter) in front of the Hab. The objectives of the test focused on structural aspects of the robot and de-risking operational elements. The EVA crew members worked together to increase the operational understanding of extracting the full-scale body of Atmosphinder, a prototype sail, and the science payload, that was used for previous EVAs, which collects various data.  Like EVA-4, the lessons learned from this exercise will de-risk these elements on future EVAs when transporting the robot to regions of interest.

There were three separate rounds of tests conducted including testing the sail for the first time, which was done by Commander James Burk holding the sail while pulling it apart with his two arms, while Crew Roboticist Erin “RobotZwrrl” Kennedy manipulated the robot’s servos and positioned the sail in various configurations to see the effects that the strong wind gusts would have on the materials and engineering design.

Qualitative testing observed, again as with EVA-4, that the robot can roll down a small incline unassisted, and this was performed on a larger slope than EVA-4 and for multiple runs.  It was expected that this test would be destructive, but the robot’s structure held together well.

The science payload was also positioned in several locations and data on the wind speed was gathered.

All tests were performed successfully and valuable new information was learned.  The crew journalist and EVA team lead also took photos and recorded video footage for public outreach and internal review purposes.

Destination: Flat ground just outside the hab.

Coordinates (use UTM WGS 84): 518100 E, 4249900 N

Participants: James Burk (Commander) (EVA Leader), Erin Kennedy (Crew Roboticist).

Road(s) and routes per MDRS Map: Walking outside between the Hab and RAM.

Mode of travel:  Walking.   No Rover driving performed; Use of Rover Bed only for this EVA.