Radar for Meteorite Search

This is the main page for documentation regarding the use of radar technologies as part of the sensor research under the Robotics Search of Antarctic Meteorites. The past and current developments of radar indicate that it has excellent possibilities of being part of the sensors of a remote explorer that will search for meteorites on ice and snow surfaces.

One important property of radar sensors is the ability of penetrating the surface, to bring information about the layer composition, buried objects and other underground features. This is specially important considering that the meteorites might be covered by layers of snow or buried slightly in ice.

Radar sensors are immune to weather and dust conditions, so it is the preferred terrain mapping and obstacle detection sensor for an semiautonomous explorer in Antarctic operations, where meteorites are more likely to be.

Even more important then the ability to detect buried meteorites, the detection of voids and hidden crevasses is vital for the machine safeguarding. This technology allows the machine to detect this dangers before stepping in to them.

The effort has been broken down into several smaller components which will be described at length as things progress. Documentation for these smaller components will appear as links from this page as it emerges.

GPR Research Pages

GPR stands for Ground Penetrating Radar. This sensor works with relatively low frequencies (usually under 1 GHz). The low frequency allows ground and soil penetration, and the echo returned from the interfaces of different media is used to obtain information about buried objects, voids and layers of different composition under the surface.

The following pages are related to the Anctarctic Season 97-98 (first project expedition).

Antarctica GPR Research Plan: Radar Research Plan shows the plans for experiments and research in the project's first season in Antarctica (January 1998).
GPR Equipment Configuration: GPR Equipment Configuration describes the equipment brought in the first season, the GPR, positioning and attitude sensors.
Sensor Acquisition Visual Interface: The acquisition unit is a laptop mounted in the sled with the rest of the sensors. Description of the visual interfaces to control data acquisition are presented.
Early Results: Early Result presents the early results of data analysis. Simple presentation of the representation of buried objects, layers, and voids are shown.

Navigation Radar Research Pages

Radar sensors are immune to weather and dust conditions, so it is feasible as obstacle detection sensor for an semiautonomous explorer in Antarctic operations, where meteorites are more likely to be. Radar with high frequencies might detect objects and obstacles to obtain traversability information.

Back to Experiment Results.

Robotic Search for Antarctic Meteorites 1998 All material on this page is property of NASA and Carnegie Mellon University. Any image or text taken from this site and incorporated into another document without consent violates the Copyright Law of the United States and the Berne International Copyright Agreement. Send comments, questions, or suggestions to Dimitrios Apostolopoulos. This document prepared by Michael Wagner.