Mars Science Laboratory Liftoff!

MSL is officially underway!  Curiosity -- a rover the size of an SUV, nuclear powered, carrying 10 science instruments including a Canadian-built APSX spectrometer -- will search for signs of past life in Gale Crater on Mars, hypothesized to be an ancient lakebed.  From an engineering perspective, the landing may be the most exciting part as JPL's new "sky crane" will be used to deposit the rover on the surface.  Read more about the mission in this CBC article.

Searching for Methane on Mars(Dome)

This past week we ran a field deployment in the MarsDome to search for a methane source using a rover.  The rover moved around mapping the terrain and gathering spectrometer readings in order to narrow down the location of the source.  It's a bit like playing Battleship, but with robots!  Next summer we'll be heading up to Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian High Arctic to simulate this mission with a real methane source at a site called Lost Hammer Spring.

Keith Passes FOE

Keith successfully defended his PhD thesis on Nov 17; Prof. Hong Zhang from the University of Alberta was the external examiner.  Congrats, Dr. Leung!

Computer and Robot Vision (CRV) 2012

Tim will be acting as the Co-Chair of CRV2012 along with Prof. Philippe Giguère from Université Laval.  The Call for Papers is now available on the conference website.  The conference will be in Toronto next year from May 27 to 30, held at York University, just a few minutes from UTIAS.

Dry Runs for Mars Analogue Mission

This week we are doing dry runs for a field deployment to be held at UTIAS Nov 21-24 for a Canadian Space Agency contract led by York University.  The purpose of the mission is to localize a methane spring using a spectrometer mounted on a small rover platform.  We'll be testing out our procedures and equipment this week at UTIAS to make sure that we are ready for the deployment this November.  If all goes well, we'll be heading up to Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian High Arctic next July to do the scenario for real at an actual methane spring called Lost Hammer.  The picture shows our rover platform with one of the spectrometers.