Airbus has been testing its Mars Sample Fetch rover in mimicked Martian terrain at a quarry near London for the last few weeks, hoping that the technology, which is no longer scheduled for Mars, would get a second chance on a future moon mission. Originally, the rover was supposed to gather materials stored by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover for a return to Earth in the early 2030s. However, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), which are working together on the Mars sample-return effort, abandoned the fetch rover proposal in July of this year in favor of a pair of tiny NASA helicopters.
The cancellation was the second Mars rover-related loss for Airbus and the whole European space sector this year, following the postponement of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover launch in September due to Russia's involvement in the project.
According to Airbus officials, the fetch rover can go up to twice as fast as Perseverance and has a distinctive wheel design inspired by Apollo-era lunar rovers. The wheels are protected by metallic mesh tires that adapt to the surface and allow the rover to climb over obstacles more effectively.
Airbus engineers put the autonomous navigation system that enables the rover to independently plot its course and safely avoid obstacles through its paces during recent tests in the quarry near Milton Keynes, a town around 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of London.
We've been quite delighted with how it's been working in this simulated Mars [environment], said Warren Hamilton, an Airbus guidance, navigation, and control systems architect on the Sample Fetch Rover project. We've tried to make it as Mars-like as possible, sprinkling pebbles around and filling the terrain with fascinating obstacles.
The necessity to deploy hardened space-qualified computers, which lag behind the present state of the art, is the largest barrier in making the technology function, according to Hamilton. Instead of traveling around autonomously, the rover stops every couple of meters to assess the terrain before continuing on its voyage.
According to Hamilton, the space-rated computers are extremely sluggish, resembling technology from the 1990s. The crew was surprised by the decision to replace the retrieve rover with two helicopters, but they are hopeful that the technology will be used again in one of NASA's planned moon research missions as part of the Artemis program.
According to Hamilton, the technology that we've developed and continue to develop for the navigation system for obstacle avoidance and autonomous traverse is really applicable to any environment. We took it into a quarry and it functioned great.
Ben Dobke, an integrated breadboard manager on Airbus' Mars Fetch Rover project, stated that while the navigation system could easily transition to the moon, the rover architecture itself would require a considerable technological makeover.
According to Dobke, the temperature extremes on the moon are more dramatic. Mars has a 24-hour day like Earth, however, the moon has 14 days of shadow. Building a technology that can work on the moon can thus be difficult. That is something we will investigate in future investigations.
Meanwhile, ESA, which sponsored the construction of the Mars Sample Fetch rover, is trying to plan the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover's future. The ExoMars rover, designed to look for signs of life beneath the surface of Mars with a 6.6-foot-long (2-meter) drill, was set to launch last month from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launch was canceled when the European Space Agency halted and subsequently terminated collaboration with Russia in reaction to the invasion of Ukraine.
With NASA's assistance, ESA intends to send the ExoMars rover to Mars before the end of this decade. The project's ultimate decision will be made later this year. To continue with ExoMars, the European Space Agency and its member states will need to pay far more than the 1.3 billion euros already spent on the mission. Russia, in addition to providing the launch vehicle, funded and built the rover's landing platform, which will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.