The PROMISE mission will occur in the LMCP training centre consisting of the Hydronaut H03 Deep Lab, the Mission Control Centre and the Extravehicular Activity Simulation Area (EVA Area). It is with the Hydronaut project that the aforementioned FEL teams collaborate closely.
The programme of the simulated mission will have a scientific part and the part aims at science communication. During the scientific part of the mission, the crew, consisting of Aleš Svoboda, engineer Matyáš Šanda and hyperbaric medicine expert Dr. Miroslav Rozložník, will spend 48 hours in isolation in the Hydronaut habitat. The simulation of a flight to the Moon will include various scientific experiments and an isolated ascent to the "lunar surface" with the help of virtual reality, where the crew will "collect" geological samples.
In the popularization part, consisting of talks and presentations by the participating institutions and companies, Dr Zbyněk Kocur from the Department of Telecommunications Engineering will start to speak on behalf of FEE on Sunday, 8 September at 15:30. This part will be broadcast on social media.
It was Dr. Kocur's team that provided the Hydronaut project with its E-Shaper device and modified it to influence the communication channel between the crew and the "ground" control station. "Thanks to the E-Shaper device, we can create a scenario in which we will gradually increase the delay and change the reliability of the communication, thus emulating the conditions during a trip to the Moon or another space mission. The project participants will test that the systems in use work under these conditions, but they will also test delayed or distorted communication between the people in the habitat and the control centre," described Dr Kocur. "Modifications to our facility were necessary in two ways. First, the delay values themselves had to be increased from values common on Earth, which are at most hundreds of milliseconds, to the order of seconds to tens of seconds. For more distant missions, however, it can be minutes or more. Furthermore, it was important to be able to specify a dynamic scenario, according to which the delay varies, corresponding to the trajectory of the mission," explained Assoc. Jiří Vodrážka, Head of the Department of Telecommunication Engineering at FEE.
How to work better with the control system?
Experts from the Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction at FEE have joined the project in cooperation with Hydronaut during the Summer. The team, led by Associate Professor Zdeněk Míkovec, will work on improving the Common Tongue board communication system, which is used for logistics operations in industrial practice, and simulating space missions. This can be both tasks and resources - human, but also technical or material, for example, managing and controlling material consumption during experiments," said Assoc. Míkovec.
According to Míkovec, the preparation of information and data visualisation is an interesting challenge for the crew, which is constantly under psychological pressure. Other needs of the project include the efficient transfer of work between different actors, the continuous execution of tasks, as well as changes to original plans.
"They need to be able to change the plan quickly while still maintaining maximum efficiency throughout the process," the expert noted. "And this is the system we are now tasked with optimising and improving, in addition to designing new ways of visualisation and interaction," he stated, adding that two main principles apply - to make everything as reliable and safe as possible. "This means reducing as much as possible the amount of errors that could occur during interaction - oversights, misunderstanding commands. At the same time, everything needs to be as efficient as possible. Because these are relatively expensive missions. Any inefficiency will dramatically affect the cost or even failure to meet the set goal," the scientist said.
According to Assoc. Míkovec said the team is looking at about a year of cooperation. "The first results will be available during this Autumn, when we will analyse the function of the entire system. Currently, one of the students, Adam Loucký, is already 'on a mission' with the system and is researching it. We will also start with user research among all the players involved. And during the winter semester we will create a first proposal of what the improved system could look like," plans Assoc. Míkovec. According to him, the summer semester will be in the spirit of intensive testing and prototyping of the new Common Tongue system interface - in laboratory conditions and the missions themselves. "And gradually we will fine-tune everything so that we can easily incorporate the results into the existing system," said Míkovec.
Back-up system for monitoring living conditions
Dr Ladislav Sieger from the Department of Physics offered the Hydronaut team his experience in building critical systems. His students and PhD students were involved in the construction of the VZLUSAT1 satellite, which has been in orbit for six years. He is now developing an ad hoc network of intercommunicating dataloggers capable of monitoring the living conditions of astronauts on missions. Hydronaut already uses its habitat monitoring system. It is part of the station's IT system. "Experience shows that it is always wise to have a backup system that is independent of the station system. This year, a bachelor's thesis was defended that deals with the datalogger network. The next step will be to extend the idea for mission-specific requirements for Hydronaut," Dr Sieger summarized.
Photo of Z. Kocur: Petr Neugebauer
Photos of J. Vodrážka and Z. Míkovec: FEE CTU
