FIDO Mars Prototype Rover Desert Field Trials
April 30-May 11, 2001
May 10-11, 2001 LAPIS III Portion
Prepared by:
Ray Arvidson (arvidson@wunder.wustl.edu)
Cassie Bowman (cdbowman@stanford.edu)
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130
And
Diane Sherman (diane@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu)
Department of Astronomy
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Draft
February 12, 2001
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Purpose
This document describes the LAPIS III program, focusing on implementation and assessment plans. LAPIS originated as a prototype active-participation educational program designed to involve small groups of high school students and their teachers in testing the prototype Mars Exploration Rover, FIDO. The LAPIS acronym encompasses the first initials of the four sites that participated in the pilot program: Los Angeles, CA, Phoenix, AZ, Ithaca, NY, and St. Louis, MO. The pilot program provided the basis for LAPIS II, implemented in 2000, and LAPIS III, which will similarly involve small groups of high school students and teachers in testing FIDO in the spring of 2001. FIDO is a prototype rover for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover and is used to test operation concepts and to train the Athena Science Team on how to operate rovers and payloads in complex terrains. The LAPIS III activities dovetail onto these objectives by involving small groups of students and their teachers in development of field test objectives and plans and by letting them implement an actual portion of the tests, specifically digging a trench and characterizing the materials using FIDO and its instruments. Additionally, a student-developed website will allow other students and the public to follow the student mission and the field tests.
1.2 Scope
This plan covers:
· Organization of four high school student teams
· Delineation of roles and responsibilities
· Development of a LAPIS III mission plan
· Development of a plan for field support activities during the tests
· Development and implementation of an archiving plan
· Development of a student-maintained web site
· Preparation for an JPL Mars Yard FIDO tests before the desert tests
· Student participation in the field tests
· Delineation of expected results
· Final assessment of the program and participation
· Schedule for the program
2.0 Overview of LAPIS III: Student Test Mission
2.1 Mission Overview
The LAPIS III mission (involving four high school student groups from Norwich, NY, Los Angeles, CA, St. Louis, MO, and Haltom, TX) is designed to involve small teams of high school students and their teachers in the development and implementation of a simulated Mars rover mission to be completed during the FIDO rover field trials in the spring of 2001. With the help of Athena Team mentors from institutions participating in FIDO testing, the students will be involved in all aspects of mission planning, culminating in a published CD-ROM containing the documentation and data from their tests. Using WITS (Web Interface for Telescience), a web-based tool that allows remote users to command the rover and see the data it returns, students will both follow the rover’s progress over the two weeks of testing and control the rover during the two-day student mission. Students not involved in LAPIS III will be able to follow the test mission through the FIDO Science Server, maintained at Washington University, and the LAPIS III web site, maintained by the participating students. Students will be able to submit questions on the web sites and read answers posted by mentors from the actual science team and by participating students.
2.2 Roles and Responsibilities
2.2.1 Norwich (Ithaca), NY
The Norwich (Ithaca), NY team from Norwich High School, lead by Patti Giltner will be responsible for the development of a mission plan for selecting a site for soil trenching with FIDO, getting to the site, and conducting trenching operations and associated measurements. They will work together to determine specific science and engineering goals for the LAPIS III portion of the rover tests, plan scenarios, and develop a mission plan using the science server web site (http://wufs.wustl.edu/rover) developed and maintained by Washington University, and input from the other student groups. They will be responsible for making necessary changes per lessons learned during the rehearsals at the Mars Yard at JPL leading up to the tests. Steve Squyres of Cornell University will be the science mentor for the Ithaca team and Diane Sherman will assist as coordinator. The Ithaca team will also work with the St. Louis group to develop educational materials.
2.2.2 Los Angeles
The Los Angeles, CA team from (TBA), lead by Steve Dworetzky, will be responsible for being at JPL to help command the rover for the Mars Yard rehearsal, including videotaping rover activities and generating a report that documents lessons-learned from the tests. They will also be responsible for interviewing three FIDO scientists or engineers and providing briefs articles to the St. Louis team to be included on the LAPIS III public web site. Finally, they will be responsible for generating a WITS User’s Guide for the LAPIS III tests and being the “WITS Experts”, helping the other teams learn to use WITS. Jeff Norris and Bob Anderson from JPL will be the science mentors for the Los Angeles team.
2.2.3 St. Louis, MO
The St. Louis, MO team from Clayton High School, lead by Nathan Peck, will be responsible for posting on the web raw and derived data from the Mars Yard and field tests in the form of Analyst’s Notebooks. Part of this task will be to develop a LAPIS III web site and part will be to understand how to use the NASA Ames stereo pipeline and Viz systems at Washington University to process image data to mosaics and terrain models. Ray Arvidson will be the science mentor for the St. Louis team, assisted by Stephanie Nelson.
2.2.4 Haltom, TX
The Haltom team, from Haltom High School, lead by Bob Houston, will be responsible for establishing a library of images, spectral reflectance, composition, and mineral library for the types of soils that will be excavated by FIDO. Richard Morris and Doug Ming of JSC will be the science mentors for the Haltom team. The samples for measurements will be provided by Ray Arvidson and will be representative of the materials found at the Mars Yard and at the Desert Test sites. During the mission these students will lead the efforts focused on comparisons of library data and FIDO data.
2.2.5 Washington University
In addition to his role as the Athena Team mentor for the St. Louis Team, Arvidson will also be the Mission Director for the LAPIS III Student Mission. Aided by Cassie Bowman, Mission Coordinator, he will act as a point of contact for all university and science mentors and support organization efforts of the LAPIS III mission including all-team teleconferences and inter-team collaboration. Arvidson will also be the liaison between the FIDO test team and the LAPIS III team.
2.2.6 Teachers
The teachers will help guide the students in their roles and responsibilities and help coordinate the interaction between students and science mentors. The teachers will also make sure the students can participate in the all-team teleconferences. Teachers are encouraged to provide any robotics or rover-related classroom activities they have developed to the St. Louis team for inclusion on the web site.
2.2.7 Science Mentors
Science mentors will be responsible for working with their respective high school groups, providing background information on Mars science, the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover Mission, the FIDO tests, and ensuring that the teams complete assigned tasks. Science mentors and/or their assistants will participate in bi-weekly teleconferences consisting of mentors and the LAPIS III Coordinator starting January 31, 2001. They will visit their teams and their teams will visit them to stay in touch, in addition to use of email and phone.
2.2.8 LAPIS III Student Mission Team
All members of LAPIS III Team will be responsible for becoming familiar with the FIDO web site (http://wufs.wustl.edu/rover), mission planning, rover testing (scientific and mechanical), and use of WITS for following and commanding the rover. All members will also become familiar with Mars science, the Athena Science Payload (http://athena.cornell.edu) and the Mars Exploration Rover Mission for 2003. All-team teleconferences will be conducted on a bi-weekly basis (and possibly videoconferences using CUSeeMe and web cameras). All teams will be responsible for providing input into the development of a LAPIS III Mission Plan led by the Ithaca Team and suggestions for changes following the Mars Yard Tests. Each group also has specific responsibilities as delineated above. During the Mars Yard rehearsals, each group will help command the rover to conduct elements of the operations to be accomplished during the Desert Tests. During the LAPIS III Desert tests they will command the rover for ½ day. Participating students will be at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on May 10-11 for the LAPIS III part of the field tests.
3.0 Specific Tasks and Schedules
3.1 Mission Plan Development
The Mission Plan, to be developed by the Ithaca team with input from all other LAPIS III team members, will be started following an initial all-team teleconference on February 6, 2001. The plan will include both a Mars Yard Test in April 2001 and the Desert Test from May 10-11, 2001. The first complete draft of the Mission Plan will be completed for review by the other LAPIS III teams, team facilitators, and university/science mentors by March 9, 2001.
Mission objectives will include choosing an area of interest, traversing to that area and characterizing the area, digging a trench using one of the rover wheels, and examining and characterizing the trench using the rover’s instruments. Working with the science mentors and the other LAPIS III students, the Ithaca team will devise a plan for reaching the target and maximizing the science data that can be acquired.
3.2 Mars Yard Tests
The Mars Yard tests at JPL will take place in April. The LA Team will be at JPL doing field documentation, but all students will participate via teleconference in commanding the rover to test elements of the planned Desert Field Test activities. The date and time are TBA.
3.3 Desert Tests
The LAPIS III Student Mission will take place on May 10 and 11 with Athena Team tests April 30-May 9, 2001. The tests will be blind tests, although students will have orbital imagery prior to the tests. The control center will be at JPL and the student teams will be at JPL for the Desert Tests. No students will be in the field because these are blind tests.
3.4 Web Site Development and Maintenance
By March 9, 2001, the St. Louis team will have developed a LAPIS III web site to be used to facilitate interaction between the LAPIS III teams and the public and to post relevant data in the form of an Experimenter’s Notebook. Separately, the password-protected team web site will be developed and maintained by Cassie Bowman and Stephanie Nelson.
4.0 Expected Results
4.1 Results from the LAPIS III Student Mission
Results will include: a. enhanced understanding Mars science, the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, and the processes involved in mission planning and implementation; b. enhanced understanding of information technologies; c. enhanced appreciation and understanding of the importance of team work and how it gets accomplished.
4.2 Assessment – Empowerment Evaluation
We will use empowerment evaluation to evaluate LAPIS III. With this approach, all participants will continuously contribute to improving the program as it goes along and help provide a strong set of lessons-learned to be applied to next year. We will use qualitative methods (survey, interview) in this empowerment evaluation of the LAPIS 3 program.
The people involved in this evaluation will include the participating students and teachers, the mentors (participating FIDO scientists and engineers from around the country), the coordinator (Cassie Bowman), and the mission director (Ray Arvidson). Since the program mainly takes place via email, teleconferences, a team web site, and videoconferences, the evaluation will follow suit.
The evaluation will be implemented in early January with the start of LAPIS 3 and will culminate following the LAPIS III field trials on May 10th and 11th. The use of empowerment evaluation will provide a variety of checkpoints throughout the program.
The stakeholders exist on two levels. Main stakeholders are Arvidson and Bowman. A secondary level of stakeholders includes the participants of the program--the mentors, teachers, and students. There is a new group of LAPIS students and teachers each year so the final evaluation will not affect this group in the future. However, since this is an empowerment evaluation, the information gathered at the start and the mid-point of the program will affect this group’s experience as it is used to make mid-course changes and enhancements.
We will use empowerment evaluation to evaluate LAPIS 3 since we plan to implement the program each year until the 2003 mission and use it as a model for the mission educational outreach.
In the past, we have solicited input from all
members in terms of their expectations (at the beginning) and their experiences
(at the end) through the use of surveys and informal emails and discussions. This
time, we want to systemize this approach so that all participants continuously
contribute to improving the program as it goes along and help provide a strong
set of lessons-learned to be applied to next year.
We will use qualitative methods in this empowerment evaluation of the LAPIS 3 program. We will break the evaluation into three periods (labeled A-before and right at the program beginning, B-during the program, and C-at the end of the program) and will focus on the three steps of empowerment evaluation (as outlined Foundations of Empowerment Evaluation by David Fetterman) which include: “(a) developing a mission, vision, or unifying purpose; (b) taking stock or determining where the program stands, including strengths and weaknesses; and (c) planning for the future by establishing goals and helping participants determine their own strategies to accomplish program goals and objectives” (Fetterman, 23).
Period A:
Before the program begins we will revisit the lessons learned from last year (a document written at the end of LAPIS II last year) with all returning mentors and assistants. We will outline what worked that we wish to repeat and what changes we want to make for this year’s program.
Additionally, at the beginning of the program, after the participants have been selected, we will ask the students and teachers to complete an on-line survey through which they can express their thoughts about the “mission” of the program, their expectations for the program, and their assessment of their skills and interests in particular areas.
Also, at the start of the program, one student from each group will be assigned the role of archivist, sending group updates to me weekly to be posted on the team web site.
Period B:
Partway through the program, each participant (mentors, teachers, and students) will be asked to fill out an online survey [see Appendix A]. The survey will have space for the participants to answer opened-ended as well as ranking questions. Through this survey, participants will have the opportunity to:
· Share their thoughts on the “mission” of the program and whether it still holds;
· List what they believe to be the 5-10 most important features or activities of the program in order of priority (Fetterman, 24);
· Share whether the program is meeting their expectations (why or why not);
· Provide any suggestions they have that would make it more meaningful/interesting;
· Share whether they think they are gaining skills in information technology/use of computers, mathematics/general science, communication skills, problem solving and teamwork;
· Share how they feel about their group’s role in LAPIS 3;
· And share their view of the best and worst things about the program so far.
With the lists from all participants about what aspects/activities they think are the most important, we will develop a simple, online survey listing the top five or ten activities/aspects shared by the participants and ask them to rank each one on a scale from 1 (the activity is not being implemented well) to 10 (the activity/aspect is perfect). With this data, we will discuss with the participants online about what they mean by the score (low or high) they give and ask for details about aspects that got low scores. This will help us redefine the program’s goals as it nears the implementation of the capstone experience—the mission.
We will also be reviewing the weekly team updates to make sure the groups feel like they are on track, and Bowman will be talking directly with the teachers and mentors each week. This information will help us make mid-program adjustments and make sure that the program is having a positive impact.
Period C:
At the end of the program, participant interviews, surveys, and consideration of the actual products of the program (the student-developed mission plan, archive, and web page) will be used assess the merit of LAPIS 3, develop a new set of lessons-learned, and to develop goals and strategies to improve the program practice for next year.
Fetterman, D. (2001). Foundations of Empowerment Evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
5.0 Press Involvement
5.1 Press Coverage
The four LAPIS III teams will be responsible for their own press coverage at their home institutions. The Mission Director and Mission Coordinator should be informed of planned press coverage, along with Mary Hardin, JPL.
6.0 Schedule (Dates may be subject to change. Telecon times will be assigned after the first two telecons. Telecon topics and group timelines will be developed in greater detail with the start of LAPIS III)
Date |
Activity |
|
2/2 Fri. |
Telecon with Mentors and Teachers |
|
2/6 Tues. |
All-team telecon, Ray and Steve present, roles and responsibilities explained. |
|
2/16 Fri. |
All-team telecon, progress reports |
|
2/28 Wed. |
All-team telecon, progress reports, Ithaca team provides preliminary information on the mission plan goals and objectives. |
|
3/9 Fri. 1-2 PT |
All-team telecon, St. Louis team presents public web site, Haltom team presents preliminary findings, Ithaca team presents mission plan, LA team presents information gained from interviews and visit to JPL. Please have any visual information or links to Cassie by 3/7 to be posted on the web site. |
|
3/22 Thurs. 1-2 PT |
WITS Traning. Teams provide feedback to Ithaca team about mission plan. |
|
3/29-3/30 |
Athena Mars Yard Tests – LAPIS 3 team may watch on-line/listen in on telecon. |
|
4/5 Thurs. 1-2 PT |
All-team telecon, progress reports, discussion and plan for the Mars Yard tests. Ithaca team provides final version of the mission plan. |
|
4/11 Wed. 9-12 and 1-4 PT |
LAPIS 3 Mars Yard Test |
|
4/25 Wed. 1-2 PT |
All-team telecon to discuss Mars Yard test lessons learned and plan for the field tests. Ithaca team makes modifications to the mission plan. |
|
5/8 Tues. |
All-team telecon. Discuss the field tests and trip to JPL |
|
5/10-5/11 |
LAPIS III Field Tests – Students at JPL |