If you haven’t heard about NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies (Desert RATS, for short), I encourage you to follow along over the next few weeks as astronauts, scientists and engineers meet in the Arizona desert to demonstrate the latest in NASA technology development research and plan for future missions to the surface of the Moon, Mars and other rocky bodies.  Desert RATS began in 1998, and today is one of the many cool things NASA is doing.  This year, four crew members will live in two rovers from Aug. 31 through Sept. 15 to demonstrate the use of a number of interesting technologies, including:

• Space Exploration Vehicles (PDF) – a pair of rovers that astronauts will live in for 7 days at a time
• Habitat Demonstration Unit/Pressurized Excursion Module (PDF) – a simulated habitat where the rovers can dock to allow the crew room to perform experiments or deal with medical issues. The Habitat Development Unit will be used to evaluate the geosciences laboratory in conjunction with the sample collections and to assess the spacesuit maintenance area inside. This team will also focus on procedures for keeping out the dust, the effects on the overall integrated communications and data system and how easy the habitat is for people to use.
• Tri-ATHLETEs, or -Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (PDF) – two heavy-lift rover platforms that allow the habitat, or other large items, to go where the action is portable communications terminals. The ATHLETE System, which consists of a pair of Tri-ATHLETE rovers, will be remotely controlled both in Arizona and from Houston to demonstrate long-traverse operations during lunar time delays and portable local operations from the personnel in Arizona.
• Centaur 2 (PDF) – a possible four-wheeled transportation method for NASA Robonaut 2
• Portable Utility Pallets, or PUPs for short – mobile charging stations for equipment
• Navigation systems to help guide spacewalkers and both solar and wind-powered equipment, will be demonstrated and tested.
• And a suite of new geology sample collection tools, including a self-contained GeoLab glove box for conducting in-field analysis of various collected rock samples.

For more information, follow the field season on the internet. Here’s how:

NASA Webpage: The official DRATS webpage is your one-stop shop for all activities occurring during the 14-day mission.

Blogs: The DRATS team shares their field experience on their website’s blog.

Flickr: The team is also posting photos daily!!

Facebook: Click “Like” for DRATS on Facebook. This page includes links, photos, comments/discussions from the DRATS team, students and interested citizens.

Twitter: The team is tweeting from @DESERT_RATS throughout the mission—these are brief communications to give a real-time status of the mission activities.

YouTube: Check out videos of this year’s mission on our NASAanalogTV site.