Cornell News Service

Taqui Raza, J. P. Shulman and Melissa McClure, students in the Lansing High School enrichment program, examine images from the FIDO Mars Rover prototype on a computer in their classroom, as teacher Anna Waldron watches.

Students at Lansing High School, just north of Ithaca, are participating in the first field test of a robot vehicle that will explore the surface of Mars in the early years of the new century.

Since April 19 the vehicle, known as FIDO (for Field Integrated Design and Operations Rover), has been undergoing field tests around an ancient lake bed in the Mojave desert in southern California, with scientists operating the controls from a desert command center. The vehicle is a prototype for NASA's 2003 and 2005 Mars missions. On Wednesday, high school students from Lansing, St. Louis, Phoenix and Los Angeles took over the controls as an integrated mission team and began commanding FIDO directly from their schools.

The students are responsible for planning, conducting and archiving the two-day FIDO mission. The Lansing students, who are mission controllers, have been working since February to master the complex software required to operate the rover, under the guidance of enrichment teacher Anna Waldron, Cornell assistant professor of astronomy Jim Bell, and coordinator of astronomy education/outreach at Cornell Diane Sherman.

During the tense two days of driving, each team of students has a three-hour shift to "uplink" its command sequences to the rover through an Internet software package called WITS, for Web Interface for Telescience, developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Teacher Waldron's 15 Lansing students, ranging from ninth- to 12th- graders, have spent the last three months working after school to develop a mission plan that will determine where the vehicle will travel in the bleak desert test site, and which instruments it will use to make specific measurements at points along the way.

The Mojave site was chosen because it is a relatively arid region with an interesting geologic past that indicates the abundant presence of water, simulating a potential landing site on Mars. The students have developed an ambitious plan for FIDO to traverse and explore a gully, acquiring remote sensing data on the geology and possible biology of this water-carved feature.

NASA has assigned the four high school teams the tasks of developing the mission plan, planning the data-archiving procedure, and planning education and outreach activities associated with the FIDO tests. The students expect to produce and distribute a CD-ROM containing educational activities based on the field test, as well as personal entries and experiences from the mission logs and data collected during the mission.

Cornell Astronomy Department

Cornell professor of astronomy Steven Squyres poses in the Mojave desert with FIDO.

The rover mission "has been a wonderful learning experience for these students," says Sherman. "They have learned to work together as a team using their math, science, and geography skills. I believe it has also given the students a first-hand look at how planetary science is done, that things don't always work the first time, and that creative troubleshooting is critical to the success of the mission."

FIDO is about the size of a coffee table and weighs about the same as a St. Bernard dog, about 70 kilograms (150 pounds). It is approximately 85 centimeters (about 33 inches) wide, 105 centimeters (41 inches) long, and 55 centimeters (22 inches) high. The rover moves up to 300 meters an hour (less than a mile per hour) over smooth terrain, using its onboard stereo vision systems to detect and avoid obstacles. During these tests, FIDO is powered by both solar panels that cover the top of the rover and by replaceable, rechargeable batteries.

FIDO is designed to be a rock-retriever, because future robotic rovers on Mars will need to find the best rocks to bring back to Earth -- samples that are likely to contain the evidence scientists need to determine if life once existed on the red planet. The vehicle carries instruments similar to those that will be part of the Athena payload on the 2003 and 2005 sample-return missions. The Athena Project is organized by Cornell University under the leadership of principal investigator and Cornell astronomy professor Steven Squyres.

The students have had to become familiar with these instruments, which include an infrared spectrometer and four separate camera systems for navigation, hazard-avoidance, high-resolution science imaging, and "belly" imaging -- looking straight down.

They also have had to understand FIDO's engineering constraints: How fast and how far from the lander it can travel, and what kinds of obstacles can hang it up. And they have become familiar with the geology of Mars and the Mojave, integrating their planned route and measurements into NASA's goals for the future exploration of Mars.

"This project has given high school students an opportunity to plan and implement a space science mission with the help of leading scientists in the field," says Waldron. "Students have experienced every facet of a mission, including the frustrations and failed plans that go along with exploration. It has been an amazing experience for them and for me as I've watched them work together as a team to create a real scientific mission."

The Lansing students were invited to Cornell in early April to participate in a practice run of the mission, during which many of the techniques they will use for their mission plan were ironed out.

The project has been designed to maximize the students' scientific, engineering, and hands-on computational experience, notes Bell. He adds that the experience also has provided the students with an introduction to state-of-the-art NASA planetary exploration technology as well as interactions with and mentoring from scientists who will be involved with the real Mars missions in just a few years.

As for the actual testing of the rover vehicle in the Mojave, "we've had a fantastic week," says Squyres. "In just a few days, we've shown that we can find good rocks, drill samples out of them, and take the samples back to a lander. That's a huge step forward in preparing to bring the first samples back from Mars."

The Lansing High School students in the mission are:

• George Salloum
• David Metzger
• Josh Stevens
• Kim Schuttenberg
• Taqui Raza
• Kyri Murdough
• Melissa McClure
• Allison Bishop
• J.P.Shulman
• Dana Elmquist
• Eric Losey
• Mike Ducharme
• Tim Morrell

The 15th team member, sophomore Emily Dean, was chosen by the students to represent Lansing High School at the Mojave test site as a guest of NASA.