The ExoFit Rover field trial - simulating ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover operations

The ExoMars 2022 Rosalind Franklin Rover will search for signs of past and present life on Mars, and study the water/geochemical environment in the shallow subsurface. The mission will launch in autumn 2022, together with the Kazachok surface platform, and includes an analytical and imaging comprehensive instrument suite and a sampling drill that can penetrate to ~ 2 m beneath the surface.¹ The mission will land in Oxia Planum, an area of Mars containing sedimentary rocks with high clay-mineral content².

To prepare for ExoMars surface operations, an ExoMars-Like Field Trial (ExoFiT) using an instrumented ExoMars-like Rover has been performed, building on past field trial experience^3,4. The aim of the trial was to understand how the ExoMars Rover and its instrument payload would be used to meet the ExoMars Rover science goals, when operated by a realistic science team. Also, to provide ‘lessons-learned’ to improve and inform operations planning for the real mission.

The first part of the trial occurred in the Tabernas desert, Spain, in 2018. The Tabernas site contains a sequence of sedimentary rocks and hosts a variety of geomorphological and mineralogical features typical of clay-rich desert surfaces. The second part of the trial was performed in the Atacama desert, Chile, in 2019. The Atacama site has a very Mars-like environment, consisting of a dry desert pavement made of gravel and boulders, interspersed with finer-grained, coarse sand patches.

The ExoFiT Rover and lander platform were supplied and operated by AIRBUS and have similar capabilities and dimensions to the ExoMars Rover hardware. The ExoFiT Rover included emulators for the ExoMars’ PanCam⁵ (colour stereo panoramic camera), CLUPI⁶ (close-up camera), WISDOM⁷ (ground-penetrating RADAR), ISEM⁸ (infrared reflectance spectrometer), RLS⁹ (Raman spectrometer), and de-mounted emulator of the ExoMars Rover drill instrument.

In both trials, the rover was controlled from a Remote Control Centre (RCC) in the UK. The RCC team included members of several ExoMars instrument teams, planetary scientists, engineers, and ESA observers. In all cases, the RCC was kept “blind” and controlled the Rover as if it were on Mars, using only Mars-like orbital remote sensing assets, and data returned to the RCC from the Rover itself. Realistic rover operations constraints (e.g., daily operating time and data budget) and tactical planning uplink/downlink time constraints were used. The astrobiological “mission success” science goal for ExoFiT was to return a drill core sample from a fine-grained sedimentary material laid down in water, or that had undergone deposition of minerals from groundwater, and so had once been both a habitable environment and one in which biosignatures could have been preserved.

Here, we present a description of the ExoFiT trials including tactical and strategic planning, pre-mission orbital mapping, and analysis of science return. We assess whether we were able to meet the ExoFit astrobiological science goal, and summarise key lessons learned for the real ExoMars Rover mission.

References cited

1. Vago, J. L. et al. Habitability on Early Mars and the Search for Biosignatures with the ExoMars Rover. Astrobiology 17, 471–510 (2017).

2. Quantin-Nataf, C. et al. ExoMars at Oxia Planum, Probing the Aqueous-Related Noachian Environments. LPI Contributions 2089, 6317 (2019).

3. Balme, M. R. et al. The 2016 UK Space Agency Mars Utah Rover Field Investigation (MURFI). Planetary and Space Science (2018) doi:10.1016/j.pss.2018.12.003.

4. Woods, M. et al. Autonomous science for an ExoMars Rover–like mission. Journal of Field Robotics 26, 358–390.

5. Coates, A. J. et al. The PanCam Instrument for the ExoMars Rover. Astrobiology 17, 511–541 (2017).

6. Josset, J.-L. et al. CLUPI, a high-performance imaging system on the ESA-NASA rover of the 2018 ExoMars mission to discover biofabrics on Mars. in vol. 14 13616 (2012).

7. Ciarletti, V. et al. The WISDOM Radar: Unveiling the Subsurface Beneath the ExoMars Rover and Identifying the Best Locations for Drilling. Astrobiology 17, 565–584 (2017).

8. Korablev, O. I. et al. Infrared Spectrometer for ExoMars: A Mast-Mounted Instrument for the Rover. Astrobiology 17, 542–564 (2017).

9. Rull, F. et al. The Raman Laser Spectrometer for the ExoMars Rover Mission to Mars. Astrobiology 17, 627–654 (2017).