ASU professor talks about NASA field tests

Kip Hodges, director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, was quoted in the Arizona Capitol Time's Sept. 25 story "NASA tests new moon buggy near Flagstaff." In his story about NASA's Desert RATS, an acronym for Research and Technology Studies, writer Salvador Rodriguez provides an overview of the field tests and highlights the next-generation rover.

As a RATS science team member, Hodges spent time at the lunar-like analog site at Black Point Lava Flow working with a team of engineers, geologists and astronauts to test technology NASA hopes to take to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

"The probability of you getting seriously injured or killed goes way up when you're in a suit, so if there was a way that you could do geology without having to get out of a confined, protected environment then you certainly would prefer to do that," Hodges is quoted as saying in the story.

The next generation rover accomplishes this through a set of cameras mounted on the vehicle and by its ability to move in any direction. The rover also is able to tilt its cabin closer to the surface and give astronauts a closer view of the rocks they are researching. Unlike during the Apollo era, future astronauts will not have to leave their vehicle until it is time to physically collect desired specimens.

"It allows you to have a whole series of instruments that you could literally put right up onto the rock to interrogate the rock itself," Hodges said. "All the kinds of instruments that you've heard of that are on the Mars rovers, they could be mounted on something like this too, so it would allow you to have all of that added awareness of the geology around you that's really hard to pack into the confines of that spacesuit."