Uncrewed Systems Technology 048 | Kodiak Driver | 5G focus | Tiburon USV | Skypersonic Skycopter and Skyrover | CES 2023 | Limbach L 2400 DX and L 550 EFG | NXInnovation NX 100 Enviro | Solar power focus | Protegimus Protection

68 N ow that the presence of water ice on Mars has been confirmed, many organisations have committed themselves to establishing a human presence on the planet – NASA in particular. The agency hopes to drive exploration and research onMars by creating a crewed base, although uncrewed vehicles will remain just as important – if not more so – for futuremissions. The Curiosity and Perseverance rover UGVs, the Ingenuity helicopter UAV and other uncrewed orbiter and lander craft have after all played vital roles inMartian photogrammetry and hydrology work to date. Giuseppe Santangelo, CEO of Skypersonic, says NASA wants its Mars astronauts to be as well-trained as possible in the operating procedures and daily life as an uncrewed vehicle operator and technician on another planet, where the environment and geography are quite different from those on Earth. “That means NASA needs to test its astronauts’ reactions to long periods of isolation inside a confined space similar to what the eventual Martian habitat will be like, and in the process ensure they can keep their uncrewedmapping and explorationmissions going, without needing to go outside the habitat,” he says. “So to train their teams in this kind of environment, they decided to create the CHAPEA – Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog – project, a series of missions in which four people will spend a year inside a confined environment, dealing with the isolation and uncrewed vehicle operation elements.” While some technologies such as radiation shielding and rotor adaptation for the Martian atmosphere fell outside the scope of this experiment, a couple of key technology requirements were deemed necessary for realistically training the astronauts in uncrewed vehicle operations on Mars. One was a data link with exceptionally low latency. This would ensure that the GCS operators have precise updates every second on the condition and location of their exploration vehicles, and can persistently analyse all the incoming data in real time. It will also enable them to take manual control, be it for the vehicle’s safety or the operator’s points of interest. Most important, astronauts will be unable to leave their base (be it trainees in Rory Jackson reports on how NASA is using these craft to train astronauts destined for the exploration of Mars Skypersonic’s uncrewed vehicles are being used in training simulations on Mt Etna in Italy to simulate the conditions that autonomous systems operators will face on the Red Planet (Images courtesy of Skypersonic) February/March 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Pre-mission practice