Deployment of the SOLEX Environment for Analog Space Telerobotics Validation

Kurzfassung

Lunar and planetary surface operations and eventual colonization are gaining increasing interest in the space community exemplified by ESA's Lunar Village Initiative. Consequently, larger and more complex infrastructure would be necessary to support these endeavors. As the assembly, repair, and maintenance tasks grow in correspondence to the infrastructure, robotic teams can serve as viable solution to meeting these needs. In order to test and verify the robotic capabilities necessary for surface operations, analog proving grounds on earth should be designed to simulate surface assets that should be operated by the deployed robots. This paper presents DLR's effort to develop one of such proving grounds: the SOLar farm EXperimental (SOLEX) environment, equipped with a wide array of assets expected in a surface habitat. First utilized for the METERON SUPVIS Justin space-to-ground telerobotic experiment in 2017-2018, it is continuously being further developed with the aim of supporting the validation and verification of different modalities of future space robotic operations.