Data Analysis Programming for the Phoenix Lander Mission Space Grant Symposium ’08 Patricia Wroblewski Clayton Chu

In this Presentation Basic information about the mission What type of instruments are on the lander The role of the engineers Specifically for SSI IDE Creation/Implementation of PALtools Why we needed it and what it does

Background Information The Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft will land on the Northern polar region of Mars to analyze the sub-surface terrain Launched August 4, 2007 WILL land May 25, 2008 (36 days!) Hope to answer the following questions: Can the Martian arctic support life? What is the history of water at the landing site? How is the Martian climate affected by polar dynamics? Three questions found http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mission.phpon the Missions page of phoenix End Trish Slide http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mission.php

The Payload Meterological Station (MET) Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) Robotic Arm and Robotic Arm Camera (RAC) Surface Stereo Imager (SSI)

Science Operations Center (SOC) The mission will be ran from SOC, a University of Arizona building Hundreds of people will be in the building along with people calling into video conferences Last Slide Chewy

Conclusion:

Conclusion: Good luck finding a chair! It will be pretty hectic.

SOC continued Typically two shifts: First Shift: Instrument Downlink Engineer (IDE) Kickoff Meeting Downlink occurs Health Check Meeting (30 min after Downlink) Midpoint Meeting Downselect Meeting Second Shift: Instrument Sequencing Engineer (ISE) APAM Sequence Walkthrough Validation of blocks Upload During the Mission we will be shadowing (if not eventually the primary) IDE for the SSI camera

Role of the SSI-IDE The IDE has about 1 hour to download, read through, and analyze multiple undecipherable, long reports generated by the lander The IDE must also review images, detect anomalies, and report on health and safety of the instrument. That’s a LOT of work. Trish END SLIDE

What is PALtools::basic and Why Do We Love it? The programs we have written are capable of reading, analyzing, and reporting to the IDE all these things within seconds. PALtools::basic is a collection of Perl scripts that automatically analyzes 5 generated files, reports anomalies, and divides information into easily digestible chunks each and every sol.

PALtools::Basic in Action: Integrated Report Over 100+ page report of all the commands the spacecraft executed the previous sol Tells the SSI IDE how many images were taken, how long each command took to run etc… The problem: The commands for the SSI are jumbled with commands for MECA, TEGA, etc…

The Integrated Report: Before

The Integrated Report: After LAST SLIDE FOR CHEWY

Phoenix! We are Ready for Massive Amounts of Data ISEs use it as well for their sequences PALtools::Basic for SSI only Can use programs individually for other instruments such as RAC With PALtools, SSI engineers will be able to quickly analyze information sent down by the spacecraft

See you on Mars!