NASA ’s Perseverance roamer has set a unexampled upper track record , leaving the previous Mars roamer use up its Martian rubble .
Since successfully landing on Mars in February 2021 , the Perseverance Rover has achieve some illustrious starting time , including farm enough O to keep asmall andiron alivefor an impressive 10 hours on the Red Planet . According to a newspaper on the roamer ’s robotic navigation software system , the rover has been crushing its predecessors in terms of speed , navigating difficult rocky terrain in " Snowdrift Peak " at telling speeds .
“ If you take out the sols ( Martian solar day ) dedicated to commission science , the traverse through Snowdrift Peak only lease six autonomous drive colloidal solution , which is believably 12 sols faster than Curiosity would have necessitate , ” Tyler Del Sesto , deputy rover planner steer for Perseverance at JPL in Southern California enunciate in astatement . “ Of course , everybody on the squad recognize we only set about to this level of performance by stomach on the shoulders of giants . Sojourner , Spirit , Opportunity , and Curiosity were the trailblazers . ”
Getting through the subject area of boulders – over 518 meters ( 1,700 foot ) widely – was no easy exploit . While NASA plot general road points for the wanderer , Perseverance was left to sail the field of Boulder alone using its onboard cameras and AutoNav software .
delegate navigation to the rover travel rapidly up the process , as happened when Curiosity get a software program upgrade to do so in 2012 . persistence arrived on the satellite with this software system , as well as tv camera and processing power enough to aid it sail the terrain in substantial - clip . It ’s a farsighted elbow room from microwave oven - sizedSojourner , which had to stop every 50 centimeters ( 1.6 feet ) to determine its next move .
Despite this advantage over previous Martian robots , the rover still front a immense challenge in negociate its way through the bowlder field .
“ It was much denser than anything Perseverance has encountered before – just utterly littered with these big rocks , ” Del Sesto added . “ We did n’t want to go around it because it would have demand us hebdomad . More clip driving stand for less prison term for science , so we just dive right in . ”
During Perseverance ’s time on the satellite , on less rocky terrain , it set a distance record of 347.7 m ( 1140.7 foot ) in a single day , plus the longest drive without human reappraisal , an impressive 699.9 meters ( 2296.2 feet ) .
The paper is publish in the journalScience Robotics .
