Autonomy Program on Mars Rover Wins NASA Award

The 2011 NASA Software of the Year prize was awarded to the Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS) software, which was installed on the NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity in December 2009.

The program was put together by experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California. Its goal was to make the long-lived rover capable of autonomously selecting and studying targets, without the downtime implied by sending order requests to Earth.

“With AEGIS, the rover software analyzes images onboard, detects and prioritizes science targets in those images, and autonomously obtains novel, high-quality science data of the selected targets, within 45 minutes,” JPL experts behind the software say.

Certain criteria can be specified by scientists, and AEGIS will analyze rocks or other features to detect whether they meet any of the requirements. If not, then the rover moves on, without consulting Earth about it.