Have you ever wondered how rovers could safely explore the surface of a planet? Mission Control’s contract with the Canadian Space Agency aims to address just that.
The end goal of ASAS is to detect unknown hazards such as soft soil that could immobilize a planetary rover and compromise its mission. Operating in real time, the technology developed by Mission Control aims to increase the navigation autonomy of rovers in challenging terrain and improve their speed. The ultimate objective of this project is to successfully deploy the technology on future planetary exploration missions, all the while executing our strategy of generating commercial opportunities for terrestrial spinoff technologies.
Beyond the planetary exploration application of this technology, Mission Control has found several potential collaborators that have expressed a need for technological capabilities that will emerge from the development of ASAS. Finding needs in the automotive industry, commercial cleaning industry, etc., we hope that our work can be useful to a variety of different companies and people in the future.
The ASAS project is developed in collaboration with key partners both from academia and industry, including Concordia University (Concordia’s Institute of Aerospace Design and Innovation, Dr. Chris Skonieczny); Dr. Karl Iagnemma, an expert from the U.S.; and two Canadian companies, Ontario Drive and Gear and Canadensys Aerospace.
To stay up to date on the progress with ASAS and our other projects, please check in with our newsfeed and follow our various social media accounts.