Till now NASA had to control most of the movements that were made by the two rovers on Mars.
Now the space agency has uploaded new software on both the rovers, that is, Spirit and Opportunity. Now both these rovers will be able to control and monitor themselves on Mars with little or no help from Mission Control on Earth.
It takes 20 minutes to send a radio signal from Earth to Mars. This also made the NASA think about some new software that could make these rovers think about the best path that should be traversed by them.
Their original brain had limited abilities and they could only plan out routes of only a couple of meters at a time. They still needed help from mission controllers if they had to dodge a bigger obstacle.
With this new software these rovers will be able to plan paths that are 50 meters away from them; hence they will be able to dodge around bigger obstacles easily.
Via: newscientist
