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Anomaly Recovery and the Mars Exploration RoversThe premise of the design of operations for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) is that the vehicles will drive each day. As a result, they will encounter some aspect of the terrain environment that cannot be anticipated or otherwise accommodated by the sequences linked onboard that day. The operations team then must correct the problem by planning then commanding the execution of a different drive the next day. Often other aspects of the operation on the surface of Mars: environmental changes, component degradation, errors in sequence design or execution, etc., lead to anomalies which must be addressed before normal operations can resume. The operational design that makes it possible to recover from a driving error each day also reduces the time needed to recover from anomalies. As an example of the efficiency achieved, less than 5% (about 30 sols out of 700 sols of operations) of the time on the surface has been devoted to recovery from anomalies for each vehicle. In this paper the major anomalies experienced by the MER rovers will be recounted and the streamlined approaches to addressing these problems described. The operational flexibility developed for these missions is also a function of the system design that anticipated a number of likely faults and conditions arising from uncertainty in sequence execution and environmental change. This design will be described as well as the considerations in operation that motivated this design. These considerations will likely be present in any future surface mission.
Document ID
20070017421
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
External Source(s)
Authors
Matijevic, Jacob R.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Dewell, Elizabeth A.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
June 23, 2006
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Meeting Information
Meeting: AIAA SpaceOps Conference
Location: Rome
Country: Italy
Start Date: June 19, 2006
End Date: June 24, 2006
Sponsors: American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
rovers
fault detection
flight software
anomalies

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