Rover Technology Development and Infusion for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory Mission
Richard A. Volpe, Stephen F. Peters · 2003
After the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Mission, NASA plans to send a larger, longer life Mobile Science Laboratory (MSL) in 2009. This rover is planned to last 500 days, travel ten kilometers, and demonstrate autonomous capabilities that reduce the number of communication cycles now needed to achieve successful completion of activities on the surface. Specifically, there are three categories of activity now being addressed by technology development efforts in The Mars Technology Program (MTP): long range traverse, instrument placement, and autonomous science data processing. These technologies are being developed by competitively selected teams of researchers both in and out of NASA. A multi-stage technology integration and validation process brings these distributed elements into a common software environment for rover testing and validation. Based on this validation, some software elements are being identified for incorporation in MSL mission software. MSL flight and ground software is based on the Mission Data System (MDS) architecture under development at The