Perseverance completes first multiple-sol drive

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The Perseverance Rover’s view on Mars on sol 351, earlier than it started its multiple-sol drive. | Supply: NASA/JPL

The Perseverance Rover has spent over a yr on Mars, but it surely’s nonetheless hitting new milestones. The rover accomplished its first a number of sol, or Martian day, drive this week.

Whereas the drive was the identical distance as a earlier drive that was cut up over three sols, doing it multi functional go offered distinctive challenges for the rover.

First, it requires extra planning from the JPL and NASA workforce. A 3-sol drive means they need to create and consider 3 times the variety of drive path segments and related terrain evaluations. That is sophisticated much more by the truth that the workforce received’t know precisely the place the rover will finish its earlier drive.

The drive can also be harder for the rover itself. Perseverance makes use of Autonav, which creates 3D maps of the terrain forward and plans routes with none route from a controller on Earth. Autonav is nice at choosing out obstacles like rocks, however struggles with figuring out sand, which the rover might get caught in.

To keep away from sand, the rover additionally has a map of Mars with sandy zones labeled as “keep-out-zones”. Throughout a standard drive, the rover can simply keep away from these areas, however because the drive grows longer so does the rover’s diploma of uncertainty about precisely the place it’s on its map of Mars.
Throughout its three-sol drive, the rover accounted for this uncertainty by enlarging keep-out-zones because it drove. Bigger keep-out-zones means the rover has much less house to navigate. The zones are reset when the workforce localizes precisely the place the rover is on Mars.
The rover accomplished its three-sol drive whereas on its option to its closing sampling location on its crater ground marketing campaign. After accumulating the pattern, the rover will head to the Jezero delta.
Perseverance was despatched to Mars to search for indicators of historic life and gather rock samples to be returned to Earth. The mission will hopefully final at the least one Mars yr, or about 687 Earth days.