Engineering and Operations for Planetary Field Geology – Online Short Course (Starts 12 Feb 2025) 12 February - 16 April 2025 Online

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  • From 12 February – 16 April 2026 (10 Weeks, 9 Classes, 18 Total Hours). No Class on 12 March.

  • Every Wednesday from 1–3 p.m. Eastern Time (all sessions will be recorded and available for replay; course notes will be available for download)

  • This course will provide a foundational understanding of the science motivations for and the requirements, methods, and limitations of conducting field science operations during EVAs (extravehicular activities) on planetary surfaces such as the Moon and Mars.

  • New joint course with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS)

  • All students will receive a joint AIAA/IIAS Certificate of Completion at the end of the course.

OVERVIEW
This course will provide students with a foundational understanding of the science motivations for and the requirements, methods, and limitations of conducting field science operations during EVAs (extravehicular activities) on planetary surfaces such as the Moon and Mars. The course covers the basic science drivers and the requirements and design considerations for EVA systems and tools for conducting planetary field geology. Included are an introduction to field science in the context of geology; an overview of the processes that shape the surface environments of Mars and Earth’s moon; a survey of planetary surface geologic exploration by robots and humans; and a survey of EVA systems and tools used for field science operations on a planetary surface. At the end of the course, students will have designed a tool and/or concept-of-operations for EVA field science which could be tested in an analog environment.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

  1. Describe the primary geologic processes responsible for shaping planetary surfaces
    such as that of Mars and the Moon.
  2. Discuss some of the fundamental, high-priority open questions about Mars and the
    Moon that can be addressed using field geology.
  3. Describe the physical environments (atmosphere, geology, topography, etc.) of Mars and the Moon, particularly with regard to constraints, limitations, and opportunities for field science operations on planetary surfaces.
  4. Review past and current efforts for conducting field geology on Mars and the Moon during missions using robotic (e.g. MER, MSL, etc.) and human (e.g. Apollo, Artemis) assets, particularly with regard to EVA suits, tools, and procedures used and how they affected the science return of those missions.
  5. Review past and current Earth analog field research and training campaigns, particularly with regard to EVA suit, tool, and procedure design for next-generation field science operations on planetary surfaces.
  6. Analyze and discuss the considerations for the design, fabrication, deployment, and evaluation of a geologic tool (and associated use procedures, test protocols, field traverse plans, etc.) to be used during a planetary surface science EVA, to include science task requirements; environmental, ergonomic, safety and other limitations; and mission constraints such as mass, power, time, etc.
  7. Design and fabricate a geologic tool and associated use procedures and test protocols.
  8. Discuss the practical considerations involved in planning and executing a field test of the tool at a planetary analog site.

AUDIENCE: Aerospace professionals, graduate students, upper-division undergraduate students

COURSE FEES (Sign-In To Register)
- AIAA or IIAS Member Price: $995 USD
- Non-Member Price: $1,195 USD

Classroom hours / CEUs: 18 classroom hours, 1.8 CEU/PDH

Cancellation Policy: A refund less a $50.00 cancellation fee will be assessed for all cancellations made in writing prior to 7 days before the start of the event. After that time, no refunds will be provided.

Contact: Please contact Lisa Le or Customer Service if you have questions about the course or group discounts (for 5+ participants).

Frequently Asked Questions

Outline

Class  1 (Wednesday, 12 February at 1:00 p.m. ET) Introduction to geology and geologic processes; geologic history (Earth, with application to the Moon and Mars)

Class 2 (Wednesday, 19 February at 1:00 p.m. ET) Geology and geologic processes; geologic history (continued)

Optional Assignment 1 (Science Question and Task Definition; due no later than Week 2): Short paper (~2-4 pages) on a geologic process or science question of interest that you have and how it relates to the Moon or Mars. Include a plan for how to answer your science question of interest and an idea for a tool you can build towards that end.

Class 3 (Wednesday, 26 February at 1:00 p.m. ET) Planetary field geology compared to terrestrial field geology: past efforts and lessons learned from Apollo to Mars surface exploration to Artemis.

Class 4 (Wednesday, 5 March at 1:00 p.m. ET)Current efforts and lessons learned at analog sites; field tools for planetary geology.

Optional Assignment 2 (Task-Driven Tool Definition and Design; due no later than Week 4): Technical description and justification (~2-4 pages) and initial schematic (dimensioned drawing, 3D model, etc. – whatever you are most comfortable with) of your tool.

Class 5 (Wednesday, 19 March at 1:00 p.m. ET) Geology and surface environment of the Moon, including open science questions.

Class 6 (Wednesday, 26 March at 1:00 p.m. ET) Geology and surface environment of the Moon, including open science questions (continued), The Artemis Program.

Class 7 (Wednesday, 2 April at 1:00 p.m. ET) Geology and surface environment of Mars, including open science questions.

Class 8 (Wednesday, 9 April at 1:00 p.m. ET) Historical and modern Mars orbiter, lander and rover missions.

Optional Assignment 3 (Final Tool Design and Field Plan; due no later than Week 7): Final tool design, along with potential tool evaluation plan for fieldwork (~2-4 pages, including procedures checklist). Guidance on this exercise will be provided during the Classes.

Class 9 (Wednesday, 16 April at 1:00 p.m. ET) Feedback on tool and tool evaluations by instructors and peers.

Materials

Course Delivery and Materials

  • The course lectures will be delivered via the IIAS GoToMeeting Webinar Service.
  • All sessions will be available on-demand within 1-2 days of the lecture. Once available, you can stream the replay video anytime, 24/7. All slides will be available for download after each lecture.
  • No part of these materials may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted, unless for course participants. All rights reserved.
  • Between lectures, the instructors will be available via email for technical questions and comments.
Instructors

Jose Hurtado is a Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Resource Sciences (DEERS) at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). His expertise includes field geology and planetary science, including structural geology, tectonics, geomorphology, and remote sensing, as well as human spaceflight. He joined UTEP in 2002 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Hurtado obtained his Ph.D. in geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 2002) and has an M.S. and a B.S. with honors in geology from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech, 1996).

Jose’s terrestrial research interests include tectonics and geologic hazards in the Nepal and Bhutan Himalaya. During graduate school, he conducted four field expeditions to north-central Nepal. At UTEP, he has continued his Himalayan research with four field expeditions to various areas in the Bhutan Himalaya. His planetary science research includes remote sensing studies of the Moon as well as work in terrestrial analog environments investigating the tools and techniques for planetary surface exploration with humans and robots. As member of the 2009-2012 science teams for the NASA Desert RATS field tests, Jose served as a test subject and crewmember for several 1- to 2-week mission simulations that investigated new rover and habitat technologies as well as procedures for science operations on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. He also served as member of the science team for the 2022 and 2024 NASA JETT mission simulations, developing the science operational concepts for Artemis EVAs.

In 2023, Jose joined the NASA Artemis science team. In this capacity he is working on the definition of science objectives and design of science activities and traverse plans to be conducted by the next astronauts to walk on the Moon, and he will support the Artemis III mission from Mission Control. Since 2008, Jose has served as an instructor for various NASA training activities, including Earth and Planetary Science (EPS) classroom and field training for NASA managers, engineers, and astronauts. He has been an EPS instructor for the 2009, 2013, 2017, and 2022 NASA astronaut candidate classes. He was himself a semi-finalist in the NASA astronaut selection process in 2009, 2013, and 2017. During 2014-2015 and 2023-2024, Jose was a member of the operations team at Virgin Galactic as an astronaut instructor and also worked on SpaceShipTwo cabin systems and life-support engineering tasks. Dr. Hurtado currently serves on the executive committees for the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) and the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC).

Dr. Ulyana Horodyskyj Peña is a visiting assistant professor at Colorado College (Colorado Springs, CO), teaching undergraduate courses in global climate change, energy, and alpine environments. She received her B.S in earth sciences (with a focus on geochemistry) from Rice University, and M.Sc. in geological sciences (with a focus on Moon/Mars analogs) from Brown University. After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder (May 2015), focusing on glacial changes in the high Himalaya of Nepal, she completed a post-doc at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Partially funded by a National Geographic grant, she and a team composed of IIAS’s director, Dr. Jason Reimuller, and PoSSUM graduate, Mr. Jorge Rufat-Latre, ventured to the Penny Ice Cap on Baffin Island, to understand the impacts of pollution on snowmelt in the Arctic. From 2019 - 2024, she has taken part in multiple expeditions to Svalbard (Norway), Greenland, and Antarctica, with the most recent research expedition funded by a grant from The Explorers Club to complete a half-circumnavigation of the continent.

Ulyana founded Science in the Wild in 2016, an adventure participatory science initiative. Teams have traveled to Baffin Island, Nepal, Africa (Kilimanjaro), and South America (Aconcagua in Argentina and Ojos del Salado in Chile). During the Ojos del Salado expedition, teams took part in field campaigns meant to simulate Martian geologic surveys, given the locations in the remote and harsh Atacama Desert. In September/October 2016, Ulyana was chosen as mission commander for a NASA Johnson Space Center simulated mission to an asteroid (the human exploration research analog (HERA) program) and was named in the top 120 semifinalists for the 2017 NASA astronaut program.

 

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