Francis says. ?And there's no ability for people on the Earth to make decisions about what to target. That decision has to be made on Mars, and now we can make it on Mars. So that makes use of those hours that otherwise you wouldn't have been able to do these kinds of measurements.?
Before AEGIS, rover operators only had a few options at maximizing time for science on driving days. They could do more science with ChemCam in the morning, but that meant driving later in the day, which often means using more of the rover?s energy to keep itself warm. The other option was what?s known as ?blind targeting,? where the science team would tell the rover to shoot its laser at a specific angle without having visual confirmation of what was there. This blind firing would only hit the targets the science team was looking for about 24 percent of the time ? better than nothing, but not great.
Before AEGIS, rover operators only had a few options at maximizing time for science on driving days. They could do more science with ChemCam in the morning, but that meant driving later in the day, which often means using more of the rover?s energy to keep itself warm. The other option was what?s known as ?blind targeting,? where the science team would tell the rover to shoot its laser at a specific angle without having visual confirmation of what was there. This blind firing would only hit the targets the science team was looking for about 24 percent of the time ? better than nothing, but not great.
Think of the battlefront possibilities when this gets fine tuned ...
Comment