Technologies Enabling Exploration of Skylights, Lava Tubes and Caves

Robotic exploration of skylights and caves can seek out life, investigate geology and origins, and open the subsurface of other worlds to humankind. However, exploration of these features is a daunting venture. Planetary voids present perilous terrain that requires innovative technologies for access, exploration, and modeling. This research developed technologies for venturing underground and conceived mission architectures for robotic expeditions that explore skylights, lava tubes and caves. The investigation identified effective designs for mobile robot architecture to explore sub-planetary features. Results provide insight into mission architectures, skylight reconnaissance and modeling, robot configuration and operations, and subsurface sensing and modeling. These are developed as key enablers for robotic missions to explore planetary caves. These results are compiled to generate "Spelunker", a prototype mission concept to explore a lunar skylight and cave. The Spelunker mission specifies safe landing on the rim of a skylight, tethered descent of a power and communications hub, and autonomous cave exploration by hybrid driving/hopping robots. A technology roadmap was generated identifying the maturation path for enabling technologies for this and similar missions

Complementary Flyover and Rover Sensing for Superior Modeling of Planetary Features

<p>This paper presents complementary flyover and surface exploration for reconnaissance of planetary point destinations, like skylights and polar crater rims, where local 3D detail matters. Recent breakthroughs in precise, safe landing enable spacecraft to touch down within a few hundred meters of target destinations. These precision trajectories provide unprecedented access to bird’s-eye views of the target site and enable a paradigm shift in terrain modeling and path planning. High-angle flyover views penetrate deep into concave features while low-angle rover perspectives provide detailed views of areas that cannot be seen in flight. By combining flyover and rover sensing in a complementary manner, coverage is improved and rover trajectory length is reduced by 40%. Simulation results for modeling a Lunar skylight are presented.</p