Picking up lightsabres for Mars

Detect, fetch and collect. A seemingly easy task is being tested to find the best strategy to collect samples on the martian surface, some 290 000 million km away from home.

Testing technologies for Mars exploration is part of the daily job of Laura Bielenberg, an ESA graduate trainee for the Mars Sample Return campaign.

The test takes place at the rock-strewn recreation of the Red Planet at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. The nickname of this test site is the ‘Mars Yard’ and is part of the Planetary Robotics Laboratory.

The tube is a replica of the sample caches that NASA’s Perseverance rover is leaving on Mars hermetically sealed with precious martian samples inside. They are called RSTA, an acronym of Returnable Sample Tube Assembly, and to most people on Earth they look like lightsabers.
Laura is investigating sample tube collection strategies, from autonomous detection to pose estimation of sample tubes on Mars, with a testbed called the RABBIT (RAS Bread Boarding In-house Testbed).

The Sample Transfer Arm will need to load the tubes from the martian surface for delivery towards Earth. ESA’s robotic arm will collect them from the Perseverance rover, and possibly others dropped by sample recovery helicopters as a backup.

Besides cameras and sensors, the team relies on neural networks to detect the tubes and estimate their pose. Inspired by the way the human brain works, neural networks mimic the way biological neurons signal to one another.

Credits: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/MSFC

#ESA
#Mars
#MarsRover

[erikhall]

All i am saying is that if the arm does not bottle flip at least one of the samples, we as human kind have failed.

Amazing work ! Keep it up

[UpgrayeDDDDDD]

Ingenious integration of the general grievous meme in the thumbnail 😂

[Ev-wjlm]

So hyped! and the thumbnail is absolutely brilliant, this is the best marketing you can possibly do

[pile]

Well done! Keep up the good work ESA! 👏

[LouseGrouse]

Just needs three more arms and the ability to spin them really quickly, (and also a speaker that plays obnoxious coughing sounds) great work keep it up.

[angrycreeper]

So hyped for ESA's eventual recreation of the Death Star!!

[LPPokefan]

Give whoever made that thumbnail a raise.

[globbymobby]

BAD-ASS. Wonderful video & excellent, informative responses Laura!! Thanks for this one ESA!!!

[Liberty-Jamie]

Yeah I saw these samples dropped in the pictures released. It's a really good idea. I hope everything goes well when retrieving. It would be cool if you get a testing rig on a drone. Create some arms on it.

[bensharpe]

Your sample tubes will be a fine addition for my collection!

*cough* *cough*

[ralfsenger]

Nice work, indeed! But, what about the security protocols for when returning these samples to Earth? Is ESA also involved in it?

[doppler]

Samples will be cover with dust. How can you deal with it?

[martiginestasanchez]

I have a question:
When will be the next launch of the new Arine 6?
Thanks.😊

[_yonas]

It looks like she is using ROS. Is this only for prototyping or will ROS actually run on a rover on Mars? That would be pretty cool. :)

[thegutlessleadingthecluele]

Offener Zugang ... viel glück das abzuholen ^^

[iwvkmby]

Lightsaber is soo much more sophisticated and impressive. XD

[Justsomeguy.]

Pretty sure that Mars is made of soil, rocks, carbon, nuclear Wasteland pretty much the same stuff earth is made out of.. yeah.

[thegutlessleadingthecluele]

16 min for a signal... Kappa / its like mo moving a overpowered X 86 [I, bet its funnny in a Way]) Sound from Mars is good one too... interpretation ... Am Rande des Machbaren... 😄👍god thx iam not a operater ... 😇