To Boldly Go

South Africa’s stillborn space programme has been rebooted and our next generation of space scientists is lifting off

A DEADLY 300 KM/H DUST STORM and an eight-minute lag in communications were just two of the hazards faced by University of Cape Town students piloting a NASA Mars Rover last August. Fortunately, it was all part of a virtual mission, the first of its kind undertaken in Africa.

The students are all space science master’s students associated with UCT’s Spacelab. The Mars rover mission was facilitated by Ewan Reid, lead designer on three rover prototypes for the Canadian Space Agency and mission controller for nine of NASA’s shuttle missions, and was held in collaboration with Mission Control Space Services, a technology development company and consultancy in the space sector.

According UCT News, Mission Control has been touring select universities around the world, giving students the chance to pilot the rovers and acting as a dry run for Mission Control’s actual outer space explorations. On the recent UCT event, the scenario involved a spacecraft orbiting Mars while the rover traversed a Mars-like terrain at the Canadian Space Agency outside Montreal. Their mission was to find a safe spot to land. All the while, Reid was in constant contact with the student “astronauts” and a scientific team at the testing site in Montreal. By the way, the actual “driving” of the rover was done by Xbox controller.

With the rover engulfed in the simulated 300 km/h dust storm, the team apparently acquitted themselves well despite being forced to feel their way around the last minutes of the mission purely by LIDAR when the rover cameras suffered an unplanned failure. “In the end”, says UCT News, “the astronauts found two possible landing spots, and their mission was accomplished.”