Senior Project - MIBS

Firestar Engineering is a small aerospace company established in early 2002 and located in Boulder, Colorado. Firestar Engineering's goal is to develop new technologies to advance space exploration. Currently, Firestar is working on a variety of Mars rover instruments and technologies including a microscope, a rock chipper, and large, deployable wheels.

The goal of this senior project was to develop prototype software for one of the instruments Firestar Engineering is developing. Mars Integrated Borehole Science (MIBS) is a Mars Instrument Development Program (MIDP) proposed device consisting of a 1 to 2 meter tip sampling drill integrated with Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Raman Spectroscopy, and a volatile experiment. A drill stem window and fiber optics give the LIBS and Raman instruments access to the borehole. The objective of the MIBS is to analyze subsurface mineralogy in-situ, and to determine the source of the hydrogen detected by the Mars Odyssey Spacecraft's neutron spectrometer.

Software was developed to control firing the LIBS laser, to acquire data from the spectrometers, and to analyze the data. The control interface occurs through a GUI or from a command line. Drill control, laser control, and spectrometer control are the main hardware interfaces. The data from the spectrometers can be analyzed and displayed. The software developed here is a prototype to facilitate testing of prototype hardware.