ISRU

Aloha! That’s right – PLRP is visiting Hawaii! To be more specific, Allyson and myself have journeyed to the Big Island to take part in another exploration analogue test – the In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Test. ISRU is just a fancy way of saying “using the resources that are in place”, but in this case, we mean resources that are “in place” on the Moon or Mars. Some of the major goals of planetary exploration are sample return (bringing samples from other planets to Earth) and human exploration. Both of these ventures will require lots of fuel, and in the case of human exploration, plenty of oxygen and water. To send enough of these resources to the Moon or another planet would be incredibly expensive, and might even take several trips! Therefore, learning to use resources “in place” to generate fuel, oxygen, and water will be a great help to planetary exploration!

“But what are you Pavilion Lake researchers doing at an ISRU field test?” I hear you cry. It is true that our main focus at Pavilion Lake is the scientific exploration of the lake and its microbialites. However, as our project has grown and the exploration has become more complicated (submersibles, AUV’s, complicated communications, LOTS of people working to support the science) we realized that it can sometimes be challenging to keep the science as the top priority! In our struggles to do science as effectively and successfully as we can, we realized that developing metrics (tools for evaluating how successful we are at doing research) was surprisingly helpful!

Our tent at ISRU-Hawaii. Yes, this really is Hawaii.

We have since gone on to collaborate with folks developing the next generation Lunar Rover, and have applied our metrics to their Desert RATs analogue test site in Arizona. (Check out the NASA analogue site for more information about RATs: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs/). That collaboration has continued, and when the opportunity arose to test our metrics in yet another analogue setting, we jumped at the chance! Why? The balance between science, engineering, and operations in different in each of these analogue field tests, and that difference helps us to hone our metrics. We are gaining a better and better understanding of how science functions in each of these types of analogues, and that helps us all to become better exploration scientists.

Stay tuned for next time when Allyson and Bekah say “Hey! This is Hawaii! Where are all the beaches and palm trees!?!

- Bekah