Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP)

ASTEP Projects

2011 ASTEP Awardees

Mars Methane Plume Tracer, Principal Investigator Donald Banfield, Cornell University. Recent reports of spatially and temporally viable methane on Mars have raised questions about the possibility of extant life on Mars, although other potential origins for the methane, such as volcanism, have been cited. Orbital missions to detect gases as possible indicators of Martian life and in situ methods for extracting samples from plume sources are currently being developed. However, methods for characterizing and locating plume sources must first be developed for such missions to be successful.

This project will develop and field-test techniques and instruments to fill this gap, facilitating an increase in our understanding of the nature of discrete volatile sources on Mars, how and when to detect them, and how dispersal of the plumes can guide us to their sources. Orbital observations can localize a source, but will likely be insufficient in directing a robotic sampler in the final few kilometers needed to arrive at the exact location. For this aspect of the problem, conceptual instruments and navigational algorithms to guide a slow-moving Martian rover to a plume’s source will be developed and field-tested. The results of this study will impact future Mars missions and could have applications for exploration of other planetary bodies, including Europa, Titan and the Earth (e.g., life detection in the Atacama, homeland security, pollution detection/enforcement, etc.).

Planetary Lake Lander, Principal Investigator Nathalie Cabrol of NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. This three-year field campaign will design and deploy a lake lander in the Central Andes of Chile at Laguna Negra (Black Lagoon), a particularly vulnerable system where ice is melting at an accelerated rate. The study will help answer questions about how deglaciation affects habitat, biodiversity, metabolic activity, and biogeochemical cycling in glacial lakes. Such information will provide a better understanding of how life adapted during deglaciations in the past, as well as bring new insight into Mars habitability potential during comparable geological periods.

The research will also present challenges analogous to those faced by future missions to planetary seas on Saturn’s moon, Titan. A lake lander mission to Titan would be the first of its kind, and no background operational data from analogous studies currently exists. This field campaign will deliver the first field demonstration of a remotely operated, adaptive planetary lake lander with complete systems and an analog payload. It will provide critical background information, hands-on experience, realistic simulations, and operational scenarios for the development of future planetary lake landers capable of ever increasing decision-making capabilities.

VALKYRIE: Phase 2, Principal Investigator Bill Stone, Stone Aerospace. This project builds upon the results of Phase 1 of the VALKYRIE (Very-Deep Autonomous Laser-Powered Kilowatt-Class Yo-Yoing Robotic Ice Explorer) cryobot project, currently under ASTEP funding. Phase 2 will involve three field campaigns to test a sub-scale variant of VALKYRIE: one campaign at “Great Slave Lake”
:http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/archive/f0029.html in the Canadian arctic, and two on the arctic glaciers of the Norwegian island of Svalbard. VALKYRIE will penetrate a series of selected glaciers, beginning with ice depths of 10—50m in 2012 and proceeding to as much as 200m in 2013. The Svalbard tests will also be used to map the stable, post-summer ice caves that extensively underlie certain glaciers.

VALKYRIE will be equipped with an astrobiology sensor suite and will make an autonomous decision to collect a wall core sample from within the ice column. This will allow for follow-up microbiology assays to confirm the success of the vehicle’s autonomous approach. Furthermore, the cryobot will deploy line sensors in the ice cap to provide a new method of long-term autonomous glacial monitoring. This work is leading to a full-scale, Phase 3 South Pole Lake cryobot sample return mission, which will act as a dress rehearsal for delivering a science payload to subsurface oceans on Europa and Enceladus, as well as deep investigations of the Martian ice cap.

Shallow-Borehole Array for Measuring Greenland Emission of Trace Gases as an Analogue for Methane on Mars (GETGAMM), Principal Investigator Lisa Pratt, Indiana University. The team will use three instruments to measure seasonal and diurnal variation in the concentration and isotopic composition of methane in bedrock boreholes and soil pipe wells in southwest Greenland. The measurements will provide data urgently needed for modeling greenhouse gases on Earth and for developing life-detection strategies for Mars.

At the site, temperatures drop to -3°C at 4m in continuous permafrost, providing a shallow and pristine setting for studying trace gases released by weathering and by microbial metabolism in super-permafrost bedrock and soil. Drilling over two years of field campaigns will lead to a technology demonstration in the third year of semi-autonomous robotic drilling and sealing of boreholes extending to depths of 2m. Gas in the boreholes will be transferred without atmospheric contamination to above ground instruments. GETGAMM data will act as ground truth for permafrost methane release via fracture zones on Earth and, by analogy, Mars where methane plumes have been reported in the atmosphere. Results of the study will also aid engineering and scientific preparation for a shallow drilling on Mars, currently under consideration for the 2018 mid-range rover mission.

Robotic Investigation of Subsurface Life in the Atacama Desert, Principal Investigator David Wettergreen, Carnegie Mellon University. This three-year field campaign will employ the first operation of a drill by an autonomous survey rover to explore and measure the gradients of subsurface life in the Atacama Desert. The rover will incorporate a range of sensors for biogeologic surveying, as well as a drill capable of collecting samples and making measurements to characterize subsurface habitats. The goal is to document subsurface ecosystems that have adapted to increased aridity, oxidation, and salinity, and establish drilling as a field-proven capability for science rovers.

The proposed site is thought to be uniquely analogous to early Mars, and the data gathered will be relevant for Mars exploration missions, including the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). NASA Ames Research Center will provide leadership in astrobiology and science operations. Carnegie Mellon will integrate robotics technologies in collaboration with JPL and Honeybee Robotics, and will lead the field experiment.

2008 ASTEP field expeditions

• ENDURANCE, the Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtarctic Explorer, developed by Principal Investigator Peter Doran of the University of Illinois-Chicago in collaboration with Stone Aerospace and other collaborators. A modified version of the DEPTHX vehicle (see below), ENDURANCE is an underwater robotic probe designed to explore the biological and geochemical composition of an ice-bound Antarctic lake. This project is intended to demonstrate a concept that may prove useful in the search for life on other planetary bodies where ice is known to exist. In February 2008, as a prelude to full-blown field operations in Antarctica, Doran’s team will conduct a field demonstration of ENDURANCE in an ice-covered lake in Madison, Wisconsin. During the 2008-2009 field research season in Antarctica, ENDURANCE will map the continent’s West Lake Bonney, a two-and-a-half mile long, one-mile wide, 130 foot-deep lake located in the continent’s Dry Valleys. The lake is perpetually covered with 12 to 15 feet of ice.
• The 2008 Arctic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition will mark the third of three years of ASTEP-funded field work for this project, led by Principal Investigator Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. AMASE involves a multinational team of researchers from NASA and other U.S. and European institutions. The aim of AMASE expeditions to collect scientific data and demonstrate planetary exploration technologies in a terrestrial environment analogous to areas of Mars that are of interest to astrobiologists.
• The Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute’s Environmental Sample Processor program will continue underwater testing of a deep-sea version of the ESP developed for the ASTEP program. The ESP is an underwater robotic microbial sampling system. The deep-sea environmental sample processor (D-ESP) supported by ASTEP is an instrument package designed for autonomously sampling and detecting microbes found in Earth’s deep-sea seep and hydrothermal vent fluids. The aim of this ASTEP project, led by Principal Investigator Christopher Scholin of MBARI, is to demonstrate the sort of technology that might be used to sample the ice-covered liquid-water oceans believed to exist on Jupiter’s moon Europa. The ESP collects subsurface water samples and uses an automated molecular probe to identify microorganisms and their gene products in the samples. The D-ESP is designed to evaluate the diversity and abundance of thermophilic (heat-loving) and methanotrophic (methane-processing) microorganisms present in deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
• “Oases for Life and Pre-Biotic Chemistry: Hydrothermal Exploration Using Advanced Underwater Robotics,” Principal Investigator (PI), Christopher German, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI): The “Oases” project will use an existing underwater research vehicle, “Nereus,” to explore the Mid Cayman Spreading Center, Earth’s deepest mid-ocean ridge, for novel hydrothermal systems. This project aims to accomplish the deepest-ever submersible dive to the Atlantic seafloor and search for, characterize, and return samples from deep hydrothermal systems. The “Oases” team includes experts from WHOI, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Duke University.
• “IceBite: An Auger and Sampling Systems for Ground Ice on Mars,” PI, Christopher McKay, NASA Ames Research Center: The IceBite project will develop an ice auger and sampling bit for sampling subsurface ice-cemented ground on Mars. This system will be tested in Antarctica’s University Valley, a terrestrial analogue environment for Mars. The IceBite team includes experts from the Honeybee Robotics, McGill University, and the Canadian Space Agency.

2008 Technology Development Projects

• “VALKYRIE: Very-Deep Autonomous Laser-Powered Kilowatt-Class Yo-Yoing Robotic Ice Explorer,” PI, Bill Stone, Piedra-Sombra Corporation Inc.: The VALKYRIE project will work to develop studies and demonstrations aimed at enabling a later, larger project involving a smart (autonomous), high-power science payload delivery mechanism capable of penetrating through deep ice. Team members include experts from the University of Illinois-Chicago, Stone Aerospace, NASA Ames Research Center, and other institutions.
• “Autonomous Exploration, Discovery, and Sampling of Life in Deep Sea Extreme Environments,” PI, Dana Yoerger, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI): This project will develop and demonstrate fully autonomous techniques for detecting and sampling life in deep-sea extreme environments. Team members include experts from WHOI.
• “Deep Drilling and Sampling Via Compact Low-Mass Rotary-Hammer Auto-Gopher,” PI, Kris Zacny, Honeybee Robotics: This project will develop a drill, called Auto-Gopher, designed to acquire core samples from ice, permafrost, and rocks, theoretically to depths of up to hundreds of meters below the surface of a planet. Field testing will take place near Walker Lake in Nevada. Team members include experts from the California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and other institutions.

2007 ASTEP field expeditions

• The Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer is an autonomous underwater robotic vehicle developed by Stone Aerospace in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s Field Robotics Center; the University of Texas at Austin, Jackson School of Geosciences; the Colorado School of Mines Environmental Science and Engineering Program, Golden; the University of Arizona, Tucson; and the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas. DEPTHX completed a course of technology demonstrations and scientific investigations during a series of dives in a system of deep sinkholes, or cenotes, in Mexico. The ASTEP program funded the DEPTHX project to explore concepts that might be employed on a future mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, which is believed to have an ice-covered liquid water ocean. (For more information, see NASA Headquarters press release, May 31, 2007, “NASA robot completes test drive of exploration capabilities.”)
• The Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition (AGAVE), led by ASTEP Principal Investigator Robert Reves-Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), employed two autonomous underwater robots, called Jaguar and Puma, developed for the ASTEP program to demonstrate autonomous robotic operations in deep-sea vent environments. Jaguar and Puma were designed to locate hydrothermal vent sites on the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and search for life there. The AGAVE research team included scientists and engineers from the United States, Norway, Germany, Japan, and Sweden in addition to the United States. This expedition was also supported by the National Science Foundation. (For more information, see WHOI’s “Dive and Discover” Web site.)
• The 2007 Arctic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) (see above) involved a multinational team of researchers from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and other U.S. and European institutions. Hans Amundsen of the University of Oslo, Norway, served as expedition leader. The aim of the 2007 expedition was to collect scientific data and demonstrate planetary exploration technologies in a terrestrial environment analogous to areas of Mars that are of interest to astrobiologists.
• The Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute’s Environmental Sample Processor (ESP) program has developed a special deep-sea version of the ESP for the ASTEP program. The ESP is an underwater robotic microbial sampling system. The deep-sea environmental sample processor (D-ESP) supported by ASTEP is an instrument package designed for autonomously sampling and detecting microbes found in Earth’s deep-sea seep and hydrothermal vent fluids. The aim of this ASTEP project is to demonstrate the sort of technology that might be used to sample the ice-covered liquid-water oceans believed to exist on Jupiter’s moon Europa. The ESP collects subsurface water samples and uses an automated molecular probe to identify microorganisms and their gene products in the samples. The D-ESP is designed to evaluate the diversity and abundance of thermophilic (heat-loving) and methanotrophic (methane-processing) microorganisms present in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Led by ASTEP Principal Investigator Christopher Scholin, D-ESP underwater operations took place throughout 2007.