Perseverance Just Set the Off-World Driving Record — and It Barely Noticed
Tracks along the longest drive on another world
On Sol 2006, NASA's Perseverance rover rolled past 45.22 kilometers (28.10 miles) of total driving on Mars, setting a new record for the farthest distance driven on another celestial body. The milestone had been sitting about 200 meters away two months earlier, but the rover lingered to abrade and study ancient rock outcrops. When it finally moved on, it sailed past the mark in a single drive — and its Earth-bound twin got a Guinness World Records plaque.
Two months ago, on Sol 1947, the odometer sat about 200 meters away from the milestone, a distance easily achievable with a single drive using Autonomous Navigation (AutoNav).
- vintagedave
> repurposes the high-speed commercial processor inside the Ingenuity Helicopter Base Station ... This radiation can induce “transient bit flips” in memory the software needs to function, and the team developed an effective software-based approach to radiation hardening
Anyone know what they're doing?
It sounds like a single processor, so no best-of-three or similar systems. Software solution only, possibly running on the same bitflipping CPU that's being checked. I'd be very interested to know how it's solved.
- mmooss
> After running thousands of simulations, the team raised the rover’s tilt limit to 24 degrees and reduced the clearance required under the rover’s belly pan to 20 centimeters (about 7.9 inches). The team also updated the rover’s braking software to avoid rock hazards, nearly doubled steer motor current limits, updated flight software with “dynamic slip tables” to model expected slip, and used cross-slope driving to better anchor wheels on exposed bedrock.
I wonder why they didn't model and use these parameters in the original design (I'm not at all suggesting a mistake on their part; I wonder what their thinking has been):
Were Martian environmental parameters less well-known (e.g., how gravity, air resistance / wind, and scree dynamics interact)? Bot performance in Martian environment (e.g., motor power output) less well-known? Were they being understandably conservative with their irreplaceable bot?