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

2. 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

3. 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 the Missions page of phoenix
End Trish Slide

4. 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)

5. 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

6. Conclusion:

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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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…

12. The Integrated Report: Before

13. The Integrated Report: After
LAST SLIDE FOR CHEWY

14. 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

15. See you on Mars!