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Robotic Mars Exploration: Recent Results and Future Prospects
Abstract:
The Perseverance Mars rover landed in Jezero Crater, where we can see
from orbit that a river flowed into the crater, which held a lake, and a delta
formed at the mouth of the river. The mission of Perseverance is to explore
around the delta to improve our understanding of the ancient climate and to
examine the possibility that life or precursor molecules evolved there. The
rover will also acquire a set of samples and leave them for a mission that the
U.S. and Europe plan to send later this decade to bring the samples back to
Earth. This sequence of missions is called the Mars Sample Return campaign.
Perseverance also carried a small helicopter called Ingenuity, which is a
technology demonstration of the first heavier-than-air aircraft ever to fly on
another planet. This talk will summarize new technologies in this mission for
precision landing, the helicopter, and rover traverse at much greater speeds
than prior missions. I will also summarize prospects for future robotic Mars
exploration, for example as suggested by the Mars Architecture Strategy
Working Group.
Biography:
Larry is Senior Research Scientist at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was the Supervisor of the Computer Vision Group for 21 years in the Mobility and Robotic Systems Section. Winner of the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal (2007) among other awards. He obtained his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989 and is a Fellow of the IEEE.
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