Above: Members of the 91亚色 Rover Team pose for a group photo in the cool of the evening at the Mars Research Station, Hanksville, Utah

91亚色 first entered the challenge, sponsored by TASC (The Analytic Sciences Corporation) Inc., four years ago and has finished in the top three every year, including a first-place finish in 2009. The challenge: "Design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside human explorers in the field."

Above: EVE travels the hostile clime of the Utah desert

The closest race came between the second and third place teams, and Oregon State University, who were separated by only 16 points.听 All together, the top three teams of 2011 were the same top three from 2010, but with different results.

鈥淭he level of sophistication shown by these teams was overwhelming,鈥� remarked URC director Kevin Sloan.听 鈥淭hese teams poured themselves into their rover projects over the past year, and it clearly showed.听 The level of competition was taken to an entirely new level this year.鈥�

Above: EVE (Enhanced Vehicle Explorer)

The 91亚色 team left Toronto with its EVE (Enhanced Vehicle Explorer) on May 27 and drove for three days to Hanksville, Utah, arriving early to ensure they could put in some field test time in the environment.

鈥淭he past few days have been intense with emotional highs and lows,鈥� said team member Shailja Sahani. 鈥淓very team member has been putting in at least 20-hour days to make the competition a success, with some sleeping only five hours in the last three days.

鈥淓veryone came together as a team with no prodding from the leadership; they simply picked up tools and got to work. Although we were well prepared before the competition, the desert environment and harsh operating conditions required many last-minute repairs and alterations.

"Our success came from our ability to fix the rover in situ and get back to the task, while other teams were left stranded,鈥� said team member Jordan Bailey.

Bailey, one of two students responsible for the team's finances and marketing, told CBC News he thinks the current rover is the team's "best one yet." Last year, the team faced multiple equipment failures as a result of the record temperatures, which soared to 38 C in the shade. This year's model has a more robust suspension, a finer control system and better temperature regulation than its predecessor, Bailey said.

Above: Jordan Bailey & Isaac DeSouza work into the night to get EVE ready

The rover cost about $13,000 to build, slightly below the $15,000 maximum allowed. The YURT is sponsored by 91亚色, and . The faculty advisers from 91亚色鈥檚 Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Engineering were Professor Michael Daly and Professor . The engineering adviser was graduate student Mark Post.

The participants included three teams from Poland, three from the United States and two from Canada. By the end of the competition, one team from each country had placed in the top three.听 The Magma2 team from the Bialystok University of Technology in Poland pulled away from the other two teams to an impressive victory.

Magma2 was the first European team to win URC.听 They also were the first team to ever deploy an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as part of the competition.

For more information, visit听the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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The Canadian Space Agency has awarded two contracts to Richmond, BC-based and a contract to the University of Calgary to develop three different concept studies for Canada鈥檚 participation in NASA鈥檚 Program 鈭� the next space venture to another celestial body in our solar system.

Under these contracts, worth $500,000 each, MDA and the University of Calgary will work with international science research teams to develop preliminary designs for the three proposed missions, one of which will be selected by NASA for launch on a planetary space mission between 2016 and 2018. The final decision will be made in 2011.

Michael Daly, a professor in the Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Science听& Engineering, is the deputy science team lead on the University of Calgary鈥檚 project. He will oversee the Canadian instrument development for the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), which would collect samples from a primitive asteroid and return them to Earth. The samples would help scientists better understand the formation of our solar system and the origin of complex molecules necessary for life.

Left: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope set its infrared eyes upon the dusty remains of shredded asteroids around several dead stars. This artist's concept illustrates one such dead star, or white dwarf, surrounded by the bits and pieces of a disintegrating asteroid. Image:听NASA/JPL Caltech.

The OSIRIS-REx proposal includes a lidar instrument, based in part on the Canadian-built laser used on NASA's Phoenix-Mars lander. Daly will collaborate with colleagues at the Universities of Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and British Columbia to develop a lidar capable of mapping asteroids and moons. Michael Drake at the University of Arizona in Tucson is the principal investigator for the overall project.

鈥淭his project builds upon 91亚色鈥檚 long history of successful collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency and our expertise in developing instrumentation for space research,鈥� said Michael Siu, associate vice-president research, science & technology. 鈥淲e have every confidence that Professor Daly and the rest of the OSIRIS-REx team will make significant strides.鈥�

Daly, a former staff member at MDA, was the chief engineer for the Phoenix Meteorological Station project. He joined 91亚色鈥檚 faculty in January 2010.

鈥淭he selection process for missions like is highly competitive,鈥� said Canadian Space Agency president Steve MacLean. 鈥淚t is a testament to Canadian talent that our industry and academic community are part of all three candidates for the mission. No matter which proposal wins, it is significant that Canada is in a position to play a highly visible and vital role in the final mission.鈥�

The Canadian Space Agency has also published a .

By Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

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On May 24, NASA released photos of the Mars Phoenix lander that finally ended even the faintest hope that the 91亚色-designed weather instruments on board the spacecraft would come to life again. The photos show that the lander鈥檚 solar panels appear to have collapsed due to the weight of a thick layer of frost, robbing it of power it needs to communicate 鈥� if its physical components were not already cracked and broken by the extreme cold.

Left: Members of the 91亚色 Phoenix team nervously await the first results from Mars on May 28, 2008

Although none of the Phoenix team at 91亚色 held out much hope for Phoenix鈥檚 survival, the news from NASA made it official. The team will be toasting both the project鈥檚 success and the lander鈥檚 demise tonight at the Space Science Symposium: Reflections on Canada鈥檚 Past and Future Achievements in Space Science, being held to honour the 50-year career of Gordon Shepherd, Distinguished Research Professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering.

鈥淲e will be celebrating the accomplishment and the fact that it鈥檚 finally over,鈥� said 91亚色 Professor Jim Whiteway, principal investigator for the Canadian portion of the Phoenix project, which was led by the University of Arizona and NASA.

The Phoenix touched down on the Red Planet two years ago and provided the world with the stunning revelation that it snows on Mars (see YFile, Oct. 1, 2008). But the lander, whose meteorology instruments were designed by Whiteway and his team from 91亚色鈥檚 Centre for Research in Earth & Space Science (CRESS) in the Faculty of Science & Engineering (FSE), was never designed to withstand a Martian winter. 鈥淲e stopped hoping it would respond in March,鈥� said Whiteway. 鈥淲e never did make any plans 鈥� it wasn鈥檛 designed to survive the winter.鈥�

NASA issued a story and photos (right) taken by the Mars Odyssey orbiter (see ), which flew over the landing site 61 times during a final attempt to communicate with the lander. No transmission from the lander was detected. Phoenix also did not communicate during 150 flights in three earlier listening campaigns this year.

Since the work of the mission ended with the onset of the Martian winter in November 2008, Whiteway and his team have published 15 papers in international journals reporting new knowledge that has changed our understanding of the climate and the hydrological cycle on Mars. These results are now informing a new generation of computer models being used to study the climate on Mars. 鈥淭hey are simple observations and would be quite pedestrian on earth,鈥� Whiteway said, 鈥渂ut they are quite something else on a different planet.鈥�

Alan Carswell, chair of the board at Optech, professor emeritus at 91亚色听and developer of听the lidar technology, said it was fitting that the Space Seminar, where he is also speaking, is being held on the very day two years ago that the 91亚色 team received the first results from Phoenix鈥檚 MET package. It was a few days later that the instrument confirmed that it snows on Mars. 鈥淭hat was a pure lidar observation 鈥� without it the snow wouldn鈥檛 have been detected,鈥� Carswell said. 鈥淭he fact that it was our lidar that allowed it to be seen was really quite reassuring and satisfying.鈥�

听

听A view of one of Phoenix's solar panels after the landing on Mars

With the project reports all but complete, the 91亚色 team听is now focusing on new proposals for missions to map asteroids and moons using the lidar technology that was a key component of the Phoenix鈥檚 MET package. These projects are being led by 91亚色 Professor Michael Daly, a former staff member at MDA Space Missions who was the chief engineer for the Phoenix MET project and then joined FSE as a professor in January.

Phoenix鈥檚 meteorological component was a collaboration led by 91亚色, in partnership with the University of Alberta, Dalhousie University, the University of Aarhus (Denmark), the Finnish Meteorological Institute, MDA Space Missions and Optech Inc., with $37 million in funding from the Canadian Space Agency. The mission was a of NASA鈥檚 Jet Propulsion Laboratories and the University of Arizona.

For more information on the science results of the mission and links to more stories about Phoenix, see YFile, July 6, 2009.

By David Fuller, contributing YFile writer.

Republished courtesy of YFile.

听

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