Planning in the Dark: Robotic Sorties into Lunar Cold Traps (A Preliminary Report)

Future robotic missions are being planned in order to explore permanently dark regions of the moon, located in craters near the poles. There the rover will monitor for the presence of hydrogen concentration, and collect and analyze samples in order to verify the presence of water ice, and, in addition, and determine the spatial distribution of the ice, including location, depth, and concentration. Unlike the case with Mars, short communication delay to the moon makes safeguarded teleoperation of the rover’s surface operations a viable strategy for navigation and control in general. Automated planning systems on the ground could also assist scientists in generating waypoint-based exploration routes. Nonetheless, the intermittent loss of direct line-of-sight communication near the poles justifies considering an approach that combines autonomous on-board decision making with teleoperation. This paper proposes an approach for autonomously constructing, executing and revising plans for multiple sorties into and out of cold traps on craters. The approach combines ground planning with on-board execution and plan revision