Space
ice-rich, impact-scarred desert” which is
“also how Mars is described.”
“The HMP site is of course less
extreme than Mars, but among terrestrial
field environments, it represents a step in
the right direction,” he says.
By being more forgiving than Mars,
Lee believes that the HMP site provides a good testing
ground, where mistakes and errors can be made and
then addressed or fixed before the unforgiving prime
time of actual missions to Mars, human or robotic.
“What also makes the HMP site exceptional as a
Mars analog is the wide range of geological features and
biological attributes of relevance to Mars concentrated on
Devon Island. This has earned the HMP site the
nickname Mars on Earth,” Lee says.
The HMP site is also relevant to Moon mission
research, in particular the exploration of the polar
regions of the lunar surface. NASA’s Artemis program is
targeting manned exploration of the lunar south pole by
2024, where water is present and the 20km-diameter
Shackleton Crater is located. At the Shackleton Crater on
the Moon there is ice at the surface and within the
impact rubble, as well as permanent daylight along parts
of the crater’s rim. These are all characteristics that Lee
says “are also true of the HMP site in the summer”.
SPACESUITS, AIRCRAFT AND GLOVES
The HMP has been field testing robotic arms, rovers,
aircraft and robotic drills for Martian exploration.
Instrumentation such as cameras, spectrometers, radars,
and sampling tools have been field tested there. The HMP
has also conducted a number of key tests to help analyze
the performance of human exploration equipment. These
have included the first field tests of spacesuits for Mars
exploration and trials of the use of ATVs (automated
transfer vehicles) as unpressurized mobility systems. The
Station has also hosted the first short and long-range
pressurized rover traverse simulations, the first field tests
“Devon Island is a “cold, dry, barren, rocky,
windswept, unvegetated, UV-drenched,
ice-rich, impact-scarred desert”
20 MARCH 2020 \\ AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM
20km
Diameter of the
Haughton Impact
Crater
1 // Field testing of the
smart glove at the
Haughton Crater in the
High Arctic provided the
closest environment to
Mars on Earth
2 // The smart glove was
integrated into the
Haughton Mars Project’s
analog spacesuit, which
was supplied by partner
Collins Aerospace
of spacesuit informatics systems as well as
the first experiments in field telemedicine
in space exploration. Habitat studies,
human factors and exploration behavioral
studies for future Mars exploration have
also been conducted at the research
station.
A notable recent development at HMP
was the testing of an Astronaut Smart
/AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM