On 8/16-17/22, members of the Kinematic Navigation and Cartography Knapsack (KNaCK, PI Michael Zanetti/ST13) team and the Smart Video Guidance Sensor team (SVGS-Rover, PI A. Summers) provided in-person demonstrations of the KNaCK and SVGS on rover platforms and the new Lunar Regolith Terrain Field (LRTF) to Associate Administrator Robert Cabana and MSFC Director Jody Singer with many other high-level visitors and representatives from the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, the Brazilian space agency Agência Espacial Brazileira (AEB), and the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA) and David McKenzie (ST13) Heidi Haviland (ST13), and Linda Krause (ST13).
Michael Zanetti, Paul Bremner (ST13)), Kyle Miller (EV42), and Walter King (ES21/ST13 detail), Alex Summers (EV41), and Tejas Lotay (EV41 summer intern) gave detailed overviews and capability demonstrations of rovers driving in the LRT Field with live-time visualization of LiDAR and Video-guidance data, including head’s up display of LiDAR point clouds while driving. Remote-pilot and autonomous navigation of the rovers was also demonstrated. Both presentations were very well received by their respective audiences, with numerous questions and great interest in the system capabilities and LRT Field facilities.
The Lunar Regolith Terrain field (LRT field, aka “giant lunar sandbox”) is now operational and available for use by teams across the center, agency, industry, and academia. Co-Principal Investigators Summers and Zanetti have orchestrated the delivery of 500 tons of JSC-1A feedstock material (volcanic cinder sand sourced from Meriam Crater, Flagstaff, AZ, the JSC-1A lunar simulant source). The LRT field measures 125 ft x 125 ft (38 m x 38 m) with a variable depth of regolith 5 in - ~4 ft (~13 cm – 1.2m), with representative geotechnical, geochemical, and optical properties of lunar mare basalt. The field is shaped with representative lunar crater shapes and topography, including large rock obstacles, and includes buried elements for ground penetrating radar and shallow seismic analyses.
The LRT field will be used for lunar surface mobility including testing lunar surface con-ops and mission-operations, autonomous roving operations using LiDAR and Target-based navigation, and lunar construction operations. The LRT field has on-site power and limited storage, with a covered mobile command center trailer with heat/AC, and complements other facilities on center, such as the new V20 vacuum regolith chamber and the Flat-Floor Facility (both in Bld 4619).
Funding for the field and associated rover and sensor development for the Kinematic Navigation and Cartography Knapsack (KNaCK) and Smart Video Guidance Sensor (SVGS) was provided by a MSFC ED Tech Excellence (Feb 2022) and Science Reserves / Position Navigation & Timing (PNT, Aug 2022) grants.
