this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover
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On the plains of Jezero, the secrets of Mars' past await us! Follow for the latest news, updates, pretty pics, and community discussion on NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's most ambitious mission to Mars!
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The way I'm reading it is the AutoNav drives were definitely taking us in circles because of the difficult terrain, so they decided to revert to drives within line-of-sight... i.e, they pick a benign path that they can see in the NavCam images, then program that for the next drive. These will always be shorter than AutoNav drives, but the line-of-sight drives are safer and we'll reach Bright Angel for the next sampling opportunity soon enough...