Well, we all have seen how all the scientists and space administrations all over the world are all looking for a successful mission to Mars. As every space administration’s aim is to roam and gather data about Mars atmosphere, water, land, and everything to come to a conclusion whether Mars is a habitable place or not.
Recently NASA had sent one of its spaceships to venture around Mars and to provide you all space lovers and even for those who are fond to know about space the agency’s newest rover is trekking across the Martian landscape using a newly enhanced auto-navigation system. Yes, that’s right it has successfully landed and has also begun its epic journey of exploration around this new planet.
So to provide you all my dear readers with some insights about this new rover so without any delay let me dive into the details and specs of this new rover system. NASA’s newest six-wheeled robot on Mars, the Perseverance rover, is beginning an epic journey across a crater floor seeking signs of ancient life which will help them understand what exactly needs to be done to make the planet habitable again as if there are some signs of ancient life that means life forms can be built again on this land. That means the rover team is deeply engaged with planning navigation routes around Mars, drafting instructions that will be used on this rover to gather the exact data they are looking for, in addition, that they are even donning special 3D glasses to help map their course. But do you know what is the most interesting part of this Perseverance rover? Well, this rover is going to drive itself and not by scientists sitting on Earth. So how exactly will this rover do so? Well while building this rover for the scientists and including a powerful auto-navigation system called AutoNav, this enhanced system makes 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identifies hazards, and plans a route around any obstacles without additional direction from controllers back on Earth. Now, this is definitely a huge leap of technology taken by NASA as it is something which has never happened before.
But there is an obvious twist to that as the rover itself can’t get its hands on the AutoNav alone so the rover team remains critical in planning and driving out Perseverance’s route. So basically the team of specialists on Earth develops the navigation route along with planning the rover’s activity of what exactly will the rover do at the specific time. But due to the delay of radio signal between the Earth and Mars the activity of the rover or where the rover is going won’t come immediately to the team on Earth thus what they do is that will be scrutinizing the satellite images, and sometimes donning those 3D glasses to view the Martian surface in the rover’s vicinity. So once the team gathers all the data then they beam the instructions to Mars which the rover executes the following day.
Now that sure is a long procedure and everyone has to stay on their toes and be alert as anything is possible as the team members said that they look forward to letting AutoNav “take the wheel.” But they’ll also be ready to intervene when needed. And we all just hope that this mission turns out to be a success and not only that but the Perseverance rover also returns back to Earth sound and safe. Till then we shall leave it upon the rover team and the scientists to gather the data they are looking for and enjoy the 3D view of Mars sitting on Earth.
