Carnegie Mellon Robot Heads To Antarctica To Search Autonomously For Meteorites - Company Business and Marketing

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Dec 13, 1999

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute is preparing to ship a robot to Antarctica to autonomously search for meteorites. The robot, named Nomad, will use advanced autonomy technology and a suite of science sensors to distinguish meteorites from terrestrial rocks and classify them on site.

According to the Carnegie researchers, Nomad's search for Antarctic meteorites marks the first time a robot will be used to discover extraterrestrial material that has fallen to Earth. It will also serve as a prototype for future science missions to Mars and the Moon.

The Nomad research program and the planned expedition are funded by grants from the Cross Enterprise Technology Development Program of NASA's Office of Space Science and is the result of a collaborative effort between the Carnegie Mellon team and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program. Funded by the NSF's Office of Polar Programs, ANSMET scientists have collected more than 10,000 Antarctic meteorites in annual expeditions since 1978.

The robot and the Carnegie Mellon/ANSMET team will travel to Elephant Moraine, a remote site in eastern Antarctica, 160 miles northeast of the United States McMurdo Station, in January. Nomad will conduct a series of experiments and searches designed to autonomously navigate in the region while searching for meteorites.

The robot will use high resolution imagery, spectroscopy and metal detection to gather science data. A newly developed manipulator arm will enable precise placement of the science instruments on rocks. The ANSMET members of the field team will serve as guides to the region and collect any meteorites that Nomad successfully locates. The expedition is expected to last three weeks, depending on the weather. n