Special Science Report

February 20, 2008

Guy de Carufel


Project:
Coarse positioning requirement for Mars navigation


Personnel:
(EVA 3) Guy de Carufel, Cassandra Morion, Heather Allaway,
(EVA 4) Philip Cunio, Zahra Khan


Operations Data Collected:
The objective of the mission is to compare the time it takes to travel
from one coordinate to the next with different positioning accuracies,
so that a positioning accuracy requirement for efficient navigation can
be determined. To do so, a bias will be added to the GPS position,
with which a crew member will attempt to navigate and find a specific
waypoint.

EVA 3 - scouting mission: The following areas were scouted: Phobos
Peak (West and North), Est of Vallis Marineris and Flats just South of
Olympus Mons. The objective was to find a large and flat area for
which straight lines of about 500m can be travelled on foot without
obstacles. The area between Turtle ridge and Phobos Peak is very flat
and would could be good, but is somewhat narrow. The area East of Valis
Marineris is not adequate. The best area found was the flats just
south of Olympus Mount. A large area of about 700m by 700m between the
hab and the Mount can be used for positioning analysis.

EVA 4 - speed of travel. A short walk was performed between the hab
and a small hill near Olympus Mount. We travelled for exactly 10
minutes and travelled 575m, making our travel speed close to 3km/h.
This will help plan the waypoint targets.


Technical/Equipment Issues:
As an attempt to record features and notes of interest, a hand recorder
was brought. The recordings were not successful. A microphone and earphones
will be plugged in to the recorder for more clear recording.


Discussion:
The next step will be to set specific coordinate targets, navigate to
the point by foot using GPS device and record the time it takes to
reach the points. This values will be used as reference values when
comparing with biased position navigation done on a later EVA.


Questions for CSO:
None at this point.