Global planning on the Mars Exploration Rovers: Software integration and surface testing

Global planning on the Mars Exploration Rovers: Software integration and surface testing

In January 2004, NASA’s twin Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs), Spirit and Opportunity, began searching the surface of Mars for evidence of past water activity. In order to localize and approach scientifically interesting targets, the rovers employ an on-board navigation system. Given the latency in sending commands from Earth to the Martian rovers (and in receiving return data), a high level of n...

Activity Planning for the Mars Exploration Rovers

Operating the Mars Exploration Rovers is a challenging, time-pressured task. Each day, the operations team must generate a new plan describing the rover activities for the next day. These plans must abide by resource limitations, safety rules, and temporal constraints. The objective is to achieve as much science as possible, choosing from a set of observation requests that oversubscribe rover r...

Surface Navigation and Mobility Intelligence on the Mars Exploration Rovers

Meteorites on Mars observed with the Mars Exploration Rovers

[1] Reduced weathering rates due to the lack of liquid water and significantly greater typical surface ages should result in a higher density of meteorites on the surface of Mars compared to Earth. Several meteorites were identified among the rocks investigated during Opportunity’s traverse across the sandy Meridiani plains. Heat Shield Rock is a IAB iron meteorite and has been officially recog...

Autonomous Rovers for Mars Exploration

1 Caelum Research Corporation at NASA Ames Research Center 2 University of Washington 3 Carnegie Mellon University ABSTRACT—The Pathfinder mission demonstrated the potential for robotic Mars exploration but at the same time indicated the need for more robust rover autonomy. Future planned missions call for long traverses over unknown terrain, robust navigation and instrument placement, and reli...