As NASA attempts to venture further into space, it is continuing to upgrade its rovers and the latest has improved upon what Mars Curiosity cannot do, according to a news release.

NASA scientists are currently developing a new camera with the capabilities of analyzing the things it captures. This will allow the rover to decide whether a particular site or specimen is worth the effort of exploring.

"We currently have a micromanaging approach to space exploration," said senior researcher Kiri Wagstaff, a computer scientist and geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "While this suffices for our rovers on Mars, it works less and less well the further you get from the Earth. If you want to get ambitious and go to Europa and asteroids and comets, you need more and more autonomy to even make that feasible."

Wagstaff and her team have developed the TextureCam, an advanced two-lens camera, in the hopes of cutting out time spent on Earth analyzing images a rover beams down. Rovers like Curiosity already are able to decipher between different types of rocks, but it still must send the image to Earth for further analysis.

The TextureCam aims to eliminate this step. From Mars to Earth and back, communication between the ground team and the rover is about 40 minutes total. From Jupiter's Europa moon to Earth and back is about 90 minutes. The new camera could significantly speed up planet and moon explorations.

"Right now for the rovers, each day is planned out on Earth based on the images the rover took the previous day," said Wagstaff. "This is a huge limitation and one of the main bottlenecks for exploration with these spacecraft."

Wagstaff said this also allows the rover leeway for unanticipated discoveries.

"If the rover itself could prioritize what's scientifically important, it would suddenly have the capability to take more images than it knows it can send back," said Wagstaff. "That goes hand in hand with its ability to discover new things that weren't anticipated."

The team's work was published online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in late August.

To avoid putting too much of a strain on the rover's main processor, the team designed a second one tasked only with analyzing TextureCam images. The special processor analyzes the rock's texture to determine if it is significantly layered and to distinguish it from either sand or sky.

"You do have to provide it with some initial training, just like you would with a human, where you give it example images of what to look for," said Wagstaff. "But once it knows what to look for, it can make the same decisions we currently do on Earth."