Python on Mars

The European MaRs Analogue Station for Advanced Technologies Integration (ERAS) is a program spearheaded by the Italian Mars Society which main goal is to provide an effective test bed for field operation studies in preparation for manned missions to Mars. The goal of the ERAS Command, Control, and Communication system (C3) is to provide the following functionalities:

• monitor and control the habitat’s environment and subsystems;
• monitor and maintain crew health and safety;
• communicate with mission support, rovers and EVA crew members;
• support data processing related to the mission objectives;
• host the core part of the crew assistant;

Since the beginning, Python has been a fundamental component of the projects, and it allowed us to establish preliminary functionality of the C3 nodes, in particular:

• Communication with the HUNVEYOR-4 space probe;
• A neural network dedicated to monitoring, detection, and alerting of anomalous situations from the OEWF (Austrian Space Forum) Aouda.X space suit biomedical data;
• A neural network dedicated to forecasting dangerous solar storms based on proton flux data;

During the talk we will see how Python is helping us taking you on Mars.