NASA’s Martian exploration robotOpportunity, who has been on the red planet for seven years, has acquired new capabilities tomake your own choices about whether to make additional observations of the rocks you findupon arrival at a new location.
The software loaded on the robot this winter is the latest example of how NASA takes advantage of the unpredictable longevity of the “Martian twins” to carry out real tests of advances in robotic autonomy for future missions. Now, the computer ofOpportunityYou can examine images that the robot takes with its wide-angle navigation camera after an expedition and recognize the rocks it encounters with specified criteria, such as a rounded shape or a bright color. From there, you can focus your wide angle mirror panoramic camera on your chosen items and take multiple images through colored filters. The new system has been dubbed‘Astronomical Exploration to Increase Science’(AEGIS).
OpportunityYou can use the new software at each stop or at the end of a Mars expedition day, allowing you to identify and examine features and patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. “It took us years to develop this capability in research robots in the laboratory,” explains Tara Estlin of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), adding that years ago it was unthinkable for space robots to achieve this level of “intelligence.”
