On the way back from Kelly Lake, we swung by Pavilion Lake to take some shots of the live sub operations underway. This is a very beautiful part of the world.

Next year the team will be diving into a lake called Kelly Lake, and potentially Pavilion Lake at the same time.  This creates a challenge for the communications team.  Both sites must have broadband access to the Space Network Research Federation (SNRF) and the Internet, and be able to communicate from site to site at all times.

Satellite connectivity is great, but in this environment the “terrain mask” (steep rise of the terrain all around us) makes it difficult to hit a satcom “bird” in the sky from these high northern latitudes.  On top of this, satellite transponder time can be expensive (especially considering the amount of “megahertz” or transponder we need!), and adds a significant “latency” to the communications link (in both directions) because the satellites are orbiting so far above the Earth.  This latency can cause problems for some of the operations conducted by this team, and terrestrial interfaces tend to have very low latency.

We took a Trackstick with us in the helicopter, and you can see the path we flew here (thanks to Google Earth!)

So we took off in a helicopter in Lillooet, and flew to Kelly Lake to visit and survey the terrestrial (ground/mountain-based) communications options for communications near the lake.  If we can avoid using a satcom link, we’ll have greater bandwidth and network performance at the 2011 test operations.

We found several options for connectivity or relay on a few mountains surrounding Kelly Lake, and even some options to link the two lakes together for next year’s mission.  This begins a year’s worth of planning “now”.  ; )

- Marc

Pavilion Lake, looking south

One of the DeepWorker chase boats, looking south.

The PLRP 2010 field season has come to a close and I am both saddened by the fact that operations are finished for another year but excited by the prospect of adding the data we’ve collected this year to our growing body of knowledge about this unique lake. I am in awe of the work that has been done by this amazing team and of how much we’ve grown, while maintaining the sense of adventure and camaraderie that to me, helps to define the PLRP.

We’ve taken great strides towards answering many of our research questions and in the process, with every answer we have come up with many more questions that will keep the PLRP team occupied for quite some time. Fortunately, our family continues to grow and every year we welcome new individuals who bring a unique perspective and desire to tease out the mysteries Pavilion has to offer. We have also been blessed this year by the addition of two little members to the PLRP family, Darlene Lim’s daughter Amelia and Greg Slater’s son Joseph. We look forward to the day when they are exploring the lake alongside us.

DeepWorker Pilots and Nuytco Team: 2010

The PLRP provides a wealth of research opportunities, and not just those focused on understanding the processes leading to the formation of the structures at Pavilion Lake but also to understanding fundamental biological, chemical and physical processes. The research contributions from our participating scientists and graduate students have resulted in a number of recent publications and are essential to increasing our understanding of Earth and astrobiological systems. We’re very proud of the role that the PLRP has played in developing operational technologies and protocols that not only help us meet our science objectives but provide important input into future space science missions.

With the addition of our two newest scientist pilots, astronauts Chris Hadfield and Stan Love, we had 34 DeepWorker missions over 10 days of operations. This year we were aided greatly in our pre-season flight planning by the wonderful team from NASA Ames led by Matt Deans and David Lees who developed an amazing flight planning tool that enabled us to search images and flight paths from previous years while building flight plans in Google Earth. Flights this year were planned to collect images of the remaining unexplored regions of the lake, to record detailed images of areas of interest identified from 2008 and 2009 data and to use the submersibles in combination with other analytical tools such as a conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) instrument and our autonomous underwater vehicle(s) (AUV). Our ability to review post-flight video data in the field, an effort pioneered in 2009, added greatly to our productivity as this information was used immediately by the science backroom team to modify existing flight plans to best optimize our data collection. As part of the daily flight debriefs, we have also continued to apply metrics associated with scientific productivity to understand factors that influence scientific exploration. New this year to the DeepWorker flight repertoire were long ~ 5 hour flights and two night flights to investigate the grazing activity that we suspect may occur in the lake. To add to the innovations this year, Nick Wilkinson designed a fantastic, interactive program for use in classifying the microbialite images. This new tool will allow us to efficiently organize and process our field data over the coming months. Stay tuned for updates.

The Amazing Pavilion Lake Research Project Team: 2010!

In case our DeepWorker operations didn’t keep us busy enough, we had a number of other important activities included in the field schedule this year. The UBC and University of Delaware AUV teams produced fantastic images of the lake bottom that were often used to compliment the DeepWorker flights and give us a better picture of where interesting structures and features are in the lake. Numerous SCUBA dives were performed by our intrepid team of divers to collect water and microbialite samples that were shared between various research groups in an effort to combine and compliment analytical findings. These samples will be characterized from a virology, microbial lipid, isotopic and genetic point of view to provide more information about the role of biology in the formation of the microbialites and what biosignatures may be left behind. Water samples were collected from nearby lakes including Crown, Turquoise, Pear and Kelly Lake to continue to help us put Pavilion Lake in context. Kelly Lake, which also hosts microbialites and has been an area of interest to the PLRP team for many years, was also the focus of significant AUV activities this year. Microbial mats were once again collected from the Cariboo Plateau lakes and giant pancakes were eaten by all (well, almost all). As a new participatory activity this year, our visiting teacherswere given the task of selecting a SCUBA dive based on their understanding of the research questions of interest (on their first day no less!). I’m happy to report that they eagerly interviewed members of the team before presenting their selected dive and rationale to the group for inclusion in the next day’s diving schedule. Community Day was another great success this year with the team happy to show off our work and answer questions from the many visitors we had to the site. Busy indeed!

We plan on continuing our updates throughout the year as we analyze samples and work through the amazing amount of data that were collected. Thanks to all who have read about our activities and through this process, have joined in our adventure. See you next year!

~ Allyson

Thanks to our amazing communications team here at the lake, we have now installed two live webcams on site: one from the shore looking out to the lake, and one on the DeepWorker mobile launch platform.

These images are found under the “Interactive” tab on our website, and also available here:

http://www.pavilionlake.com/real-time-shore-cam.php
http://www.pavilionlake.com/real-time-barge-cam.php

This is just the start: lots more to come later in the week!

-Ben

[Bekah, talking to Marc at Desert RATS 2008] “Hey – let me ask you something…  Ok, so we have this lake up in Canada that is really long, really deep, is surrounded by steep walls and lots of trees, and has some really cool ‘microbialite’ structures in it!”

[Marc] ok? [thinking: Microbe-o-light? Sounds like a really small flashlight like thingy – maybe these things glow and give off light. ; ) does the lake bottom glow? Can it be seen from space? Can we communicate with it? I’m always looking for new technology to communicate – maybe these microbe-o-light’s are the next [OLEDs]!! Bummer: Turns out they’re not – they don’t emit photons at all. ]

[Bekah, continues (summarized)] “We’re studying the ‘morphology’ of the structures on the lake floor, and the way we study them is similar to how we’ll study things on Mars when we send people there…”

[Marc] How cool is that! [thinking: Good for you, sounds like cool science – but I’m not a microbialite scientist – how can our team help?]

[Bekah] We need communications. We want to link the underwater operations to people on the shore for the first time during the sub operations. We want them to interact, and understand the best ways to do things. [enthusiastically] Can we get video from the submarines back to the shore???

[Marc] maybe – can we drag a buoy behind the sub? [thinking: then you can have video!]

[Marc, thinking, reading into Bekah’s comments and from conversations in NASA Analog Mission meetings] Ok, it’s been stated and restated to me but I finally get it. Imagine we send humans back to the moon or to Mars, and every second that a person is on the planet costs lot of money – so we want to make it very valuable. We expect that on planetary missions. In this project, microbiolite science is the end product, and the team members are working on advance degrees, etc. HOWEVER, learning how to explore a planetary body while they are collecting their science products is also a key part of their research, AND a very cool approach. What surprises me most is the PLRP team could simply study these structures and go home – but instead they want to combine their exploration of this lake in a manner that will make planetary exploration much better when humans are involved. This makes their day much longer, requires much more coordination and planning, and makes end-to-end processes more strict. But they do it. Humans will advance. How cool is that? Wow.]

We got an enthusiastic go-ahead from NASA HQ to do this work together, and build on it. So here we are!

The Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) team already had a significant amount of momentum before the comm team arrived. They have been studying this lake for years – but big things are ahead. My team is new here, and we’re working just to catch up. We’re learning how this team works, how they study their samples, how they interact with the sub flights, how they wash dishes, and how well they eat – thanks to Dana (she should be cooking for Olympic Athletes).

So, from a communications perspective, the Exploration-relevant topic we’re concerned about is: “how much communication between human explorers and Earth is necessary to “maximize” amount of things we learn about the planet?”

Ask yourself (or your students) this: When we send people back to the moon then to Mars, how often do you think Earth needs to talk to them to accomplish the mission? (Keep in mind that today we are in almost constant contact with our Crews orbiting Earth)

After all the missions we’ve had to the moon and to Earth’s orbit, this is the core question we’re asking ourselves, again. Every answer to this question has a different cost to the public and associated complexity (and risk) to the mission. For example, continuous communication to explorers is really nice to have, but has a significant cost and complexity to achieve – do we really need it? Is it required for safety? For science? How much bandwidth is needed for science data downlink to Earth? How fast does Earth need the science or navigation data to assist the explorers? We’re trying to answer these questions in analog missions.

For this PLRP mission, we’ve procured a big Internet data pipe along the lake, and we’re slinging it wirelessly across the lake using a high-power, “meshing” WiFi technology, to enable data to pass from the explorers out in the Nuytco subs back to the “control center” on shore. This is a big lake, and “illuminating” big chunks of the lake with “broadband” data is really challenging, so we’re moving our gear daily to maximize performance for the scientists, day by day.

We’re also working this year to allow teams in the command center to hear the comments live from the scientist-pilots. We believe this will help the science annotation process be more efficient. To improve upon this, next year we plan to allow the CAPCOM in the command center to talk to the sub pilots in real time, and if we get our wish, we hope to have live video from the subs in the command center as well!

-Marc

KSC’s Mobile Mission Control Center (MMCC) left Kennedy Space Center for its cross continent trip to Pavilion Lake on Friday, June 26th. It will arrive at the lake on July 4th, along with the KSC communications team including myself, Bill Dearing, and Marc Seibert.

On board the trailer is all of the communications and logistics gear to support the Pavilion Lake project this year. If you have been to the lake before, you know that its location does not lend itself to good communication. There is no cell phone coverage (nearest is 30-45 minute drive away), and no Starbucks on every corner for free Wi-Fi access.

KSC's Mobile Mission Control Center

The KSC communications team will be changing all of that. We will be setting up a wireless hot spot zone that will cover the entire lake, including voice communications with the submarines. The test team should be able to be online sending reports over the internet and talking to other scientists and researchers from around the world over many of the VoIP phone circuits we are bringing to the lake.

The past couple of weeks have been filled with last minute testing of gear, packing the MMCC trailer, as well as some extra juggling around of the trailer for a open house at the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) launch party in the rocket garden at the KSC Visitor Center. The MMCC trailer is beginning the 2009 NASA Analog season with its trip to Pavilion Lake. After PLRP, it will leave for Johnson Space Center in Texas to support dry-run activities in preparation for the September Desert Rats outing at the Black Point Lava Flow in Arizona.

I’m looking forward to visiting Pavilion Lake for my first field season, and especially excited to lend support to the DeepWorker submersible operations. By enabling better communication, the team will be able to achieve more science goals while at the lake than was ever possible in the past.

~Mike Downs