Computer expert studies Mars scientists in Arctic

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Computer expert William J. Clancey tags along when NASA researchers visit a crater 500 miles from the North Pole to explore its Mars-like environment.

"The scientists are studying the crater, the geology and biology of this land, and I'm studying the scientists," Clancey says.

He wants to see how they go about their business to develop ways that computers and other devices can be used to help astronauts explore Mars.

Clancey, a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence at the University of West Florida's Institute of Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, is on loan to the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

NASA scientists have found that the Canadian Arctic's Haughton Crater, formed when an asteroid struck Devon Island 24 million years ago, has many geological features similar to Mars.

"It was like Mars on Earth, a Mars park, if you will," said Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist for the private Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute at Mountain View, Calif.

Lee also works at Ames as leader of the Haughton-Mars Project, which studies the similarities and differences between Devon Island and Mars.

'How do people explore?'

Clancey, as leader of a NASA space exploration research team, has joined the Haughton scientists for their annual visits the past four years, spending 10 days to a month on the island each summer.

"We want to understand exploration," Clancey said during a recent visit to West Florida. "How do people explore?"

To make the research realistic, scientists put on space suits that restrict their visibility and maneuverability. They also limit their time on each traverse because on Mars they would be restricted by the amount of oxygen they could take with them.

One of the first lessons from Haughton was that motorcyle-based all-terrain vehicles with single seats offer better mobility than larger moon buggies with side-by-side seating for two astronauts.

"You have much better balance," Clancey said. "It would be a one-on-one thing, but in a pinch if one of them breaks down you can get two people on one."

Cumbersome space suit gloves quickly posed a challenge to the scientists as they took notes on their observations.

Clancey said the answer could be audio recordings that may have to be transmitted to Earth for transcription unless sufficient improvements are made in speech recognition software so it can be done on Mars.

Lengthy delays

Storing and accessing data, getting it back to Earth and communicating with Earth are other issues his team is working on.

Astronauts have near-instantaneous contact with mission control while in Earth orbit but will face lengthy delays from faraway places such as Mars.

"Imagine you're on Mars and you just had a malfunction," Clancy said.

It may be 10 minutes before the message gets to mission control, which uses 10 more minutes to formulate a response that takes another 10 minutes to get back to Mars.

"That's 30 minutes from the time that you said, 'Houston, we have problem,'" Clancey said.

The answer may be computers such as the fictional HAL 9000 in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey," which advised astronauts how to handle emergencies until deciding it had to get rid of them to complete its mission to Jupiter.

"We haven't built HAL, but it's the general notion of artificial intelligence," Clancey said. "We definitely have it within our capabilities to have programs that answer basic factual questions."