WaterFeeler2 mission goals

WaterFeeler2 will be an improved and enhanced version of WaterFeeler. It's solar powered and has basically the same goal goal as every single lander NASA has sent to Mars: "Find the Water".

The WaterFeeler2 probe comes with much bigger solar panels and two new science instruments: An RFI sensor to try to detect 50 Hertz main power interference and a vertical panorama camera. Oh yes, after a lot of deliberation, i'm including a camera after all.

I'm currently in the middle of building it and writing the software. Here are my mission goals for WaterFeeler2

Mission objectives

Required

These are the objectives that must the fulfilled. If anyone of these don't work, it's a mission failure.

• Communicate with Mission Control. (This failed on some previous missions. D'oh!)
• Downlink status of internal temperature, humidity and the battery voltage.
• Detect precipitation, e.g. rain
• Measure soil resistance
• Prove solar charging and evaluate power system design
• Function for a week
• Take and downlink a low resolution vertical panorama in greyscale (green color channel)
• Run the RFI (radio frequency interference) experiment

Desired

These are the nice-to-have objectives. If they don't work or can't be implemented in time, it's sad but not critical. But they must not interfer with the fullfilment of the "required" objectives.

• Detect decreased soil resistance after rain
• Measure soil capacity
• Prove the ability to act as a radio relais for future missions
• Function for more than a month with at least one of the science instruments still working
• Take and downlink multiple low resolution full color panoramas
• Take and downlink a medium resolution greyscale panorama (green color channel)
• Observe cloud movement
• Observe wind interacting with plants
• Take and downlink an image of precipitation (rain or snow)
• Take and downlink an image of condensing humidity in air (fog)

Optional

These optional objectives are neither urgent nor terribly important. But they could accelerate the Garden Space Program by providing additional data points and early test results.

• Downlink stored test images
• Save a soil capacity time series to EEPROM and restore it later to RAM
• Serve as radio relais for future missions
• Function for more than a year
• Take and downlink a full resolution full color panorama
• Observe an animal
• Upload and activate a firmware update
• Upload and activate a script update for the Raspberry Pi image subsystem