NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has made another first for itself, this time it drove on its own using autonomous navigation, according to a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) news release.
Curiosity is currently on a non-stop route directly to Mount Sharp, which scientists believe hold many answers to the red planet's geological history. Despite the direct trip, Curiosity is only two months into a journey that is not even half way through.
While on autonav (autonomous navigation), Curiosity's handlers on Earth can focus on the road ahead to map out the safest path. On Tuesday, the rover successfully used autonav to drive onto ground that could not be deemed safe.
The autonav feature is derived from a similar rover, Opportunity, which also currently active on Mars.
"Curiosity takes several sets of stereo pairs of images, and the rover's computer processes that information to map any geometric hazard or rough terrain," said Mark Maimone, rover mobility engineer and rover driver at NASA's JPL in Pasadena, Calif. "The rover considers all the paths it could take to get to the designated endpoint for the drive and chooses the best one."
Curiosity travelled about 141 feet that day and 33 were done on autonav. It was also the rover's 376th Marian day, or "sol." The trip took Curiosity across a cavity in the planet's surface which its Earthly drivers could not see.
"We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part. We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between," said JPL's John Wright, a rover driver.
Curiosity made camp for about six months at an area near its landing spot called "Glenelg." While there, it gathered a trove of data from the Martian surface. Curiosity's trip to Mount Sharp is expected to be several months, but does not have a set arrival date.
Curiosity landed in Gale Crater in August 2012 and seems to have plenty more years left in it. Mount Sharp lies in the middle of the crater and reaching it is the ultimate goal of the rover's mission.
"These features are geologically interesting, based on HiRISE images, and they lie very close to the path that provides the most expeditious route to the base of Mount Sharp," Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, said. "We'll study each for several sols, perhaps selecting one for drilling if it looks sufficiently interesting."
