The Curiosity rover is slowing making its way up Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall mountain on Mars. But heaving up a mountain can be tricky for a little rover.
The Curiosity rover is slowly making its way up Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall mountain on Mars. Mountains are useful to study as their steep slopes can reveal layers of material laid down over time, like a geological time capsule. But just like heaving up a mountain is a challenge for humans, it can be tricky for rovers too. Curiosity recently took on a particularly steep and slippery slope, marking its most challenging climb to date.
The rover drivers like Hale plan out the safest possible route for the rover to travel to get it where it needs to go, then send these commands on to the rover. That’s necessary because of the communications delay between Earth and Mars, which can be up to 20 minutes depending on the planets’ relative positions to each other, which would make it impossible to drive the rover in real time. It also allows for more careful forward planning to ensure no harm comes to the rover.
Recommended Videos In the recent ascent, these faults were a frequent issue. “We were basically playing fault bingo,” said Dane Schoelen, Curiosity’s strategic route planning lead at JPL. “Each day when we came in, we’d find out we faulted for one reason or another.”
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