Curiosity Rover

Nasa’s Curiosity rover can now shoot a laser at rocks on Mars without the help of humans.

16:58 25 July 2016

Nasa’ Mars rover, Curiosity has been zapping rocks using a human-controlled on-board laser to analyse the rocks’ composition since 2012. However, it now uses a software, which is the first autonomous target selection instrument of its kind, to shoot laser to blast on its own. 

 

The software, which was developed at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, allows the rover to choose multiple targets every week.

 

Tara Estlin, a robotics engineer from AEGIS, who worked on the software, said: 'This autonomy is particularly useful at times when getting the science team in the loop is difficult or impossible - in the middle of a long drive, perhaps, or when the schedules of Earth, Mars and spacecraft activities lead to delays in sharing information between the planets.' 

 

He added: 'Due to their small size and other pointing challenges, hitting these targets accurately with the laser has often required the rover to stay in place while ground operators fine tune pointing parameters.

 

'AEGIS enables these targets to be hit on the first try by automatically identifying them and calculating a pointing that will centre a ChemCam measurement on the target.'