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OPTIMISM, the Perseverance Rover’s twin, is conducting exams on Earth to organize Perseverance for challenges forward. | Picture Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Proper now, NASA’s Perseverance Rover is exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars. On Earth, Perseverance’s twin, OPTIMISM, is exploring the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
OPTIMISM is a full-scale engineering mannequin of Perseverance, modified barely to higher deal with Earth’s circumstances. For instance, OPTIMISM has wider wheels than Perseverance does, to assist it higher fight Earth’s stronger gravity. OPTIMISM is brief for Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Devices Despatched to Mars.
With OPTIMISM, NASA is ready to take a look at difficult terrains and delicate pattern gathering on Earth. NASA can rapidly intervene if one thing goes mistaken, earlier than it has Perseverance tackle the duty.
OPTIMISM has just lately been given an improve. NASA scientists added extra mobility software program and an adaptive caching meeting. Now, OPTIMISM is ready to do end-to-end testing, from drilling rock to gathering samples to caching the samples in a cylinder.
The Mars Yard is so long as a doubles tennis courtroom and twice as large. It’s modeled to appear to be a martian panorama. It’s a type of impediment course for NASA’s rovers, with slopes and rocks strewn about to check the rover’s mobility.
The Earthly twin of NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover arrives on the Mars Yard storage on the company’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. | Picture Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Perseverance is on Mars to seek for indicators of historical microbial life. That signifies that it’s tasked with taking rock samples from Mars. OPTIMISM is testing a wide range of various kinds of rocks, because the scientists aren’t certain what Perseverance will encounter on Mars. For instance, OPTIMISM just lately cored a rock efficiently on a slope with out slipping. This makes scientists hopeful that Perseverance might do the identical on Mars.
OPTIMISM can also be placing Perseverance’s autonomous navigation system, AutoNav, to the take a look at. Within the Mars Yard, the rover will be introduced with obstacles for it to determine the right way to work round. The aim is to see if Perseverance shall be prepared for longer drives sooner or later.
“The scale and form of rocks within the visible subject – will they flip into obstacles or not?” mentioned Bryan Martin, the flight software program and take a look at beds supervisor at JPL. “We take a look at a variety of that and determine what sorts of issues to keep away from. What we now have safely traversed round right here has knowledgeable rover drivers in planning their traverses on Mars. We’ve completed a lot testing on the bottom we will be assured in it. It really works.”
The Perseverance Mars Rover was launched in July of 2020 and made its touchdown on Mars in February 2021. Perseverance is exploring the Jezero crater. In September 2021, the rover cored its first rock pattern on Mars.
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