Scientists from NASA and ESA traveled to adesert near Flagstaff in Arizona(United States), forsimulate what it would be like to explore an asteroid. Since 1999, scientists, astronauts and engineers from different universities and NASA centers have come together once a year in this place to simulate manned missions to the Moon and Mars. These realistic simulations in extreme environmentshelp better plan future space exploration missionsand to gain experience in the control of complex operations.
This year the crew of astronauts and geologists “landed” on an asteroid to explore its surface in a series of extravehicular activities, on foot and with the help of two Space Exploration Vehicles. During the two weeks that the simulation lasted,the crew lived inside a Deep Space Habitat, in which communications with its mothership and with the mission control center on Earth were also simulated. To simulate the distance that separated them from our planet, an artificial delay in communications of 100 seconds was introduced. The crew also had to cope with a fairly limited bandwidth.
Although it is still impossible to simulate the reduced gravity of an asteroid, the members of the expedition had to behave as if they were on a small celestial body. For example, they had to anchor themselves to the ground each time they used their hammers to take geological samples, to prevent the recoil from the blow from throwing them back into deep space.
TheThe mission’s scientific control center was the “Erasmus” control room at ESTEC, ESA’s technology center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, which is typically used to control science operations aboard the ISS. The team of 11 scientists and engineers from France, Italy, the Netherlands, ESA and NASA communicated with the Arizona crew as if it were the control center of a real mission to an asteroid. “These scientists were like another brain and a new pair of eyes for the crew,” explains Sylvie Espinasse, project coordinator for ESA.
In a real mission to an asteroid, the explorers will have to face the fearsomesolar storms, which will disrupt radio communications and force them to seek refuge.
