For the last year, the Curiosity rover has been studying the surface of Mars with more independence than ever before, saving human time and energy. The partly autonomous exploration is also helping people sidestep the constraints of working across vast distances in space.
This new capability is powered by software called Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science, or AEGIS. It allows the rover to control its own use of ChemCam, an instrument that learns the chemical composition of rocks by zapping them with a laser and studying the resulting gasses. Between the new software’s deployment in May 2016 and April 2017, the rover did this 52 times after moving to a new location.
Combined with the observations controlled by NASA scientists, the automation has helped increase the average number of laser firings from 256 per day to 327 per day. More laser firings means more data collected, and that means NASA gets a better understanding of what Mars is like, and — more importantly — what it used to be like.
Any time Curiosity rolls into a new area of Mars, even if it’s just a few feet from its last location, AEGIS can autonomously scan the environment using the rover’s cameras. There, it identifies and ranks the best patches of bedrock to study with ChemCam. AEGIS then triggers that laser and performs those measurements. NASA announced the initiative last summer, and a paper published today in the journal Science Robotics details how well it’s gone.