NASA's "Perseverance" Mars rover demonstrated its autonomous navigation capabilities on the 854th Martian day, deftly avoiding a rock during its journey. This animation is a playback of data recorded by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover during autonomous driving on July 15, 2023, the 854th day of the mission (ie sol).

On the 854th Martian day of its mission, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover used its automatic navigation system to avoid a major obstacle - a 14-inch rock, demonstrating its advanced navigation capabilities. Image source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

During this drive, the rover identified and navigated the 14-inch (35-centimetre) rock seen at center left. The Autonomous Driving Autonomous Navigation System (AutoNav) allows the rover to autonomously re-route around rocks or other obstacles on its way to a predetermined destination. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California used visualization software to plan how the rover would move on Mars and evaluate its performance.

The 20-foot-long (6-meter) line seen from the front of the rover represents the path the rover takes to assess safety in real time as it travels. Lines that turn blue indicate that the rover has found areas of "wheel drop" danger - where the wheel could fall more than 14 inches (35 centimeters). The magenta lines indicate where the rover discovered web clearance issues, where terrain features may be too close to the web beneath the rover. The surrounding white terrain is a digital elevation model created inside the rover using images from its navigation cameras.

Animation speed is accelerated compared to real-time animation.

Astrobiology is a key goal of the Perseverance mission to Mars, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize Martian geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and become the first mission to collect and store Martian rocks and detritus (rubble and dust).

NASA's follow-up mission, in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), will send a spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA's Moon-to-Mars exploration approach. This includes the lunar Artemis mission, which will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

Caltech in Pasadena, California, builds and manages the operations of the Perseverance rover for JPL, which is managed by NASA.