Abstract
From the International Space Station to Mars – Join Abbie Hutty and Kristen Facciol on a journey through space and time! Extending an arm into space: The Canadarm and its evolution Kristen Facciol an engineer from MDA Robotics and Automation will give a technical talk about the Canadarm2, an amazing robotic arm and Dextre, Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator on the International Space Station (ISS).
She performs different analyses to ensure that the robots can perform the required tasks, suggest optimal parameters for enhanced performance and develop reconfiguration files for the control systems.
This also requires real-time flight support to ensure everything is going nominally and give operational recommendations when required. She is also involved in crew training, which is the programme that all new astronauts must go through in order to learn how to operate the Canadarm2 properly.
Launched to the ISS in 2001, it is 57.7 feet long when fully extended and has seven motorized joints. This arm is capable of handling large payloads and helped build the entire ISS orbiting complex. It has latches on either end, allowing it to be moved by both ground controllers and the expedition crews to various portions of the station. It has even been used to move astronauts around during spacewalks.
Dextre was launched in 2008 and assembled on-orbit. Each arm is 3.35 m in length with 7 joints in addition to a body roll joint. It is operated from the ground by robotics flight controllers.
Venturing where no man has gone: The Exomars Rover Project Abbie Hutty, the Senior Spacecraft Structures Engineer at Airbus Defence and Space will talk about the iconic ExoMars Rover programme which is part of the European Space Agency’s 2020 mission to search for the existence of past or present life on Mars.
She has been working on the project for more than three years and has developed the initial concept designs through to manufacture. Her team is now currently building a full-scale model, which will be followed by a flight version and a spare.
The latter is so that when the Rover on Mars has been deployed, it can test out any potential tricky manoeuvres first and have a ‘dry run’. The next couple of years before launch will consist of many tests and trials and refining designs as necessary.
ExoMars will be the first mission to combine the capability to move across the surface and to study Mars at depth.
The ExoMars Rover, developed by ESA is scheduled to be launched in 2020. It is highly autonomous, provides key mission capabilities and hosts a suite of analytical instruments. It can safely travel approximately 100 m per sol. To achieve this, it creates digital maps from navigation stereo cameras and computes a suitable trajectory.
