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NASA's Mars Curiosity Debuts Autonomous Navigation
For the first time during its time on Mars, the Curiosity rover has chosen its own course and moved without human direction.
Credit: NASA
Curiosity, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Mars rover, recently used autonomous navigation to drive onto ground that could not be confirmed safe before the start of the drive. It was the first time Curiosity had moved without human direction, and it came after a preparatory test last week.
Curiosity can use its autonomous capability to analyze images it takes during a drive, calculate a safe driving path, and proceed safely even beyond the area that the human rover drivers on Earth can evaluate ahead of time. The drive took the rover across a depression in which ground surface details had not been visible from the location where the previous drive ended, and included about 33 feet of autonomous navigation across hidden ground as part of the day's total drive of about 141 feet.
"We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part," says the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's John Wright. "We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between."
The rover is en route to Mount Sharp, a three-mile-tall mound about four miles away.
From Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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