Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars rover Curiosity, the centerpiece of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission is pictured here. This image, taken on June 29, 2010, shows Curiosity with its mobility system—wheels and suspension—in place after installation at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Ray Arvidson, a professor in the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, will be assisting both operationally, to help the new Curiosity rover route the safest path along Martian terrains, as well as scientifically, to study the soils found.

Arvidson was one of 29 individuals selected for the position at the Mars Science Laboratory, out of a total applicant pool of 150. His proposal suggested the rover should be used to observe terramechanics, or study the soil on the planet.

“My role will be to use Curiosity as a virtual instrument to simulate drives across terrains traversed and to be traversed by the rover,” Arvidson wrote in an email to Student Life. “This will help the engineers plan drives that are safe and will also allow me to retrieve soil properties of relevance to understanding Martian geological history.”

Curiosity, which launched Nov. 26 of last year, is scheduled to land on Mars in August. While previous rovers have explored for water, the new mission is geared toward searching for potentially habitable regions of the planet.

Third-year graduate student Abigail Fraeman, who is also involved in the project, said although the rover still has many months before its scheduled landing date, there is much work to be done in order to prepare it.

“This work will be useful for figuring out how best to drive Curiosity, including how to avoid any potential rover sand-traps,” she said. “Unfortunately, you can’t just dig out a rover stuck on Mars, so guiding Curiosity to safe terrains will be incredibly important to ensure the vehicle stays mobile and able to drive to the most interesting targets.”

Planning the rover’s route will involve predicting the surface terrain and how the rover will operate on it. That will mean studying data taken by instruments on satellites orbiting the red planet, as well as the data that will be collected by the rover itself.

Arvidson conducted similar research on both of his previous rover projects—Spirit and Opportunity.

“Our department is well known across the world for Mars research,” Douglas Wiens, chairman of the University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said. “The new project will strengthen our reputation and fund graduate students to carry out their thesis work on Mars.”

Arvidson’s team will be using a computer model of the rover to simulate Curiosity’s actual travels across the surface of the planet. The team will search for the least perilous route for the rover to take across Mars.

The team will also archive the data collected from the rover’s instruments from the department’s NASA Planetary Data System Geosciences Node.

The information will also be released to the public, free of charge.

“The work is important scientifically because it will give us an understanding of the soil properties at Curiosity’s landing site in Gale Crater,” Fraeman said. “It will provide additional insight into the mechanics of driving vehicles on other planets.”