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Maine to Mars Blog Index
October 01, 2007
ORT Prep

As I said, we have been preparing for the upcoming ORT (Operational Readiness Test) for the last several weeks. A lot of the software testing has been done, and we're mainly fine-tuning the tests at this point. The work is now shifting to more of the physical setup.

This round of ORTs will include some hefty RA work, just to prepare for the test. The Arm will be digging a large trench, around 20cm deep and about a meter square. Several of us spent much of Friday prepping the digging bin with different soils. We managed to get quite dirty doing so! After we put the bin back in place, we spent time arranging the area around the lander, including getting rocks of appropriate sizes AND abundances for the region we are studying.

Posted at 08:25 PM

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A native Mainer writes about his experiences as an engineer for the Phoenix Mars Mission, an effort to see if a robotic lander can find evidence that life once existed on Mars.

Robert Bovill was born at Maine Medical Center July 5, 1979. He graduated from Thornton Academy in 1998. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Maine in Orono, and then went to the University of Arizona for graduate school. He was employed full-time as a test engineer for this Phoenix Mars Mission a year and a half ago by the University of Arizona.



See a rendering of the Phoenix Mars lander during the final seconds of descent.

See the instruments on the Phoenix Mars lander.

Abbreviation Glossary
Testing  
FVT   Functional Verification Test
GDS   Ground Data System
OPUS Odyssey/Phoenix UHF System
ORT Operational Readiness Test/Training
PIT    Payload Inter-operability Testbed
PTL Payload Testbed Lab
PVV Payload Verification and Validation
   
Places  
JPL  Jet Propulsion Laboratory
LM  Lockheed-Martin
UA/LPL University of Arizona/Lunar and Planetary Lab
   
Events
EDL  Entry, Descent and Landing
   
Instruments
EM  Enginerring Model
FM Flight Model
ISAD Icy Sample Acquisition Device
MECA Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer
OM Optical Microscope
RA Robotic Arm
RAC Robotic Arm Camera
RASP Rapid Active Sampling Package
SSI    Surface Stereoscopic Imager
TECP   Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe
TEGA  Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer
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