Scientific Hybrid Reality Environments (SHyRE): Leveraging Terrestrial Fieldwork for Future Planetary Exploration

The use of analog environments in preparing for future planetary surface exploration is key in ensuring we both understand the processes shaping other planetary surfaces as well as develop the technology, systems, and concepts of operations necessary to operate in these geologic environments. While conducting fieldwork and testing technology in relevant terrestrial field environments is crucial in this development, it is often the case that operational testing requires a time-intensive iterative process that is hampered by the rigorous conditions (e.g. terrain, weather, location, etc.) found in most field environments. Additionally, field deployments can be costly and must be scheduled months in advance, therefore limiting the testing opportunities required to investigate and compare science operational concepts to only once or twice per year.

To overcome these inherent challenges, SHyRE (Scientific Hybrid Reality Environments) is a Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research (PSTAR) funded, multi-year campaign aimed at developing a scientifically-robust analog environment using a new and innovative hybrid reality (HR) setting that addresses these limitations. HR is unique in that operators not only work within a virtual environment, but physical objects, advanced tracking systems, and various other technologies (e.g. procedure assistant, voice recognition, feature tracking, etc.) are also incorporated to create a highly realistic and immersive simulated environment. To-date, the SHyRE program has integrated handheld scientific instruments (hXRF and LIBS) into a scientifically relevant geologic scene and developed a preliminary set of human planetary exploration testing scenarios. These scenarios include part-task training and procedure development of the scientific instruments as well as prototyped informatics displays to study in-situ data analysis and utilization. The application of this analog environment has immediate implications and opportunities to inform future planetary missions and science investigations by rapidly prototyping and testing new scientific instruments with relevant data processing activities (e.g. archiving and analysis) embedded within realistic/envisioned flight operational constraints.