NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover gets a major software upgrade

The replace brings a great deal of enhancements, essentially the most important being new driving capabilities.

Years within the making, a serious software program replace that has been put in on NASA’s Curiosity rover will allow the Mars robotic to drive sooner and scale back put on and tear on its wheels. These are simply two of about 180 adjustments applied throughout the replace, which required the staff to place Curiosity’s science and imaging operations on maintain between April 3 and April 7.

“The flight software is crucial to our mission, so this can be a huge deal for our staff,” mentioned Curiosity Mission Supervisor Kathya Zamora-Garcia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It is a main software program replace, and we had to ensure we did it proper.”

Planning for this replace goes again to 2016, when Curiosity final obtained a software program overhaul. Some adjustments this time round are as small as making corrections to the messages the rover sends again to mission controllers on Earth. Others simplify pc code that has been altered by a number of patches since Curiosity touched down in 2012. The largest adjustments will assist maintain Curiosity rolling extra effectively for years to come back.

The rover can now do extra of what the staff calls “considering whereas driving”—one thing NASA’s latest Mars rover, Perseverance, can carry out in a extra superior strategy to navigate round rocks and sand traps. When Perseverance drives, it always snaps footage of the terrain forward, processing them with a devoted pc so it may well autonomously navigate throughout one steady drive.

Curiosity would not have a devoted pc for this objective. As an alternative, it drives in segments, halting to course of imagery of the terrain after every section. Meaning it wants to begin and cease repeatedly over the course of a protracted drive. The brand new software program will assist the venerable rover course of photographs sooner, permitting it to spend extra time on the transfer.

“This would possibly not let Curiosity drive as rapidly as Perseverance, however as an alternative of stopping for a full minute after a drive section, we’re stopping for only a second or two,” mentioned Jonathan Denison of JPL, Curiosity’s engineering operations staff chief. “Spending much less time idling between drive segments additionally means we use much less power every day. And though we’re virtually 11 years previous, we’re nonetheless implementing new concepts to make use of extra of our out there power for science actions.”

Wheel put on

The staff additionally desires to take care of the well being of Curiosity’s aluminum wheels, which started exhibiting indicators of damaged treads in 2013. When engineers realized that sharp rocks had been chipping away on the treads, they got here up with an algorithm to enhance traction and scale back wheel put on by adjusting the rover’s velocity relying on the rocks it is rolling over.

The brand new software program goes additional by introducing two new mobility instructions that scale back the quantity of steering Curiosity must do whereas driving in an arc towards a particular waypoint. With much less steering required, the staff can attain the drive goal faster and reduce the wear and tear that inherently comes with steering.

“That means was really dreamed up throughout the Spirit and Alternative days,” Denison mentioned. “It was a ‘good to have’ they determined to not implement.”

Total, the brand new software program will streamline the duty of Curiosity’s human drivers, who’ve to put in writing complicated plans containing a whole bunch of instructions. The software program replace may even allow them to add software program patches extra simply than in previous. And it’ll assist engineers plan the motions of Curiosity’s robotic arm extra effectively and level its “head” atop the mast extra precisely.

As with every main software update, there is a sense of reduction to see it working as designed, Denison mentioned.

“The concept of hitting the set up button was a bit of scary,” he added. “Regardless of all our testing, we by no means know precisely what is going to occur till the software program is up there.”