Immersive Environment Technologies for Planetary Exploration

Immersive environments are successfully being used to support mission operations at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This technology contributed to the Mars Pathfinder Mission in planning sorties for the Sojourner rover. Results and operational experiences with these tools are being incorporated into the development of the second generation of mission planning tools. NASA's current plan includes two rovers being deployed to Mars in 2003 and early 2004. The next generation Rover Control Workstation utilizes existing technologies and more to provide a multimodal, collaborative, partially immersive environment. This system includes tools for planning long range sorties for highly autonomous rovers, tools for building the three-dimensional (3D) models of the terrain being explored, and advanced tools for visualizing telemetry from remote spacecraft and landers. These tools comprise a system for immersing the operator in the environment of another planet, body, or space to make the mission planning function more intuitive and effective.