Emily Lakdawalla '96 |
Mars in Her Eyes
By Emily Lakdawalla '96
Emily Lakdawalla ’96 has not
been to Mars, but you wouldn’t know
that
by looking at her vacation pictures. Lakdawalla is the science and technology
coordinator for the Planetary Society, a nonprofit organization founded to
encourage space exploration through political advocacy, public education and
support of innovative technology-development projects. In 2002, she took part
in a project sponsored jointly by the society and NASA on Devon Island, an Arctic
Ocean site that closely approximates the terrain and climate of Mars and is used
by NASA and other space agencies to prepare Martian missions.
In a project called Bio-inspired Engineering for Exploration Systems (BEES),
NASA’s Ames Research Center is developing an aircraft that can explore
Mars by mimicking the foraging behaviors of simple creatures like bees and ants:
self-navigating and completely autonomous. The first stage in developing this
aircraft is to test its navigation computer on the pseudo-Martian surface of
Devon Island; Lakdawalla’s team was handling the initial part of that process.
Their goal was to fly a conventional model plane fitted with a Global Positioning
System (GPS) receiver and a tiny video camera over a crater on the island, recording
gullies similar to those seen on Mars. That video would later be used to program
the BEES vehicle to fly over the same area; this flight would provide training
and allow other researchers to work out bugs in the craft’s software.
Lackdawalla’s team included Benton Lau, deputy project director of the
Ames Center, and Paul Chambers, a senior technician at Micropilot, a company
that makes miniature autopilot systems and model planes for military and scientific
research.
Lakdawalla, an Amherst geology major who earned a master’s degree
in planetary geology from Brown University, helped choose the Devon Island survey
sites and monitored the video feed from the plane. Along the way, she posted
a daily diary to the Planetary Society’s Website. Portions of her diary
are reproduced here.
July 16, 2002
After a brief visit with my family (several of whom were convinced
I’m
headed for a polar bear encounter), I am finally on my way. Benton greeted me
in the waiting area at the Chicago airport before the flight to Ottawa; he had
scoped the crowd and guessed who I was by the serious back-country hiking boots
I was wearing. Benton was wearing brand-spanking-new hiking boots and toting
a new fleece. It made me feel a bit like an old hand at this surviving-outdoors
thing.
We met the final team member, Paul Chambers, at our hotel in Ottawa. He said
all his planes, fuel and equipment had been shipped ahead, so we seem to be ready
for Devon Island.
Continued >>
Photo: Paul Chambers
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