Drive Sol

Mission brief

You're driving a rover on Mars from mission control. Orbit has mapped this 100 × 100 m site and flagged three science targets. Get the rover to all of them.

Each sol, queue FWD, BACK, LEFT and RIGHT commands and send them in one uplink. You won't see what happened until the downlink comes back.

You have 3 hours per sol, and the plan aborts if it reaches that limit. Blind drives run at 100 m/hr and just count wheel turns, so slip makes them come up short. VO drives (40 m/hr) watch the ground, steer out drift and keep going until they reach the commanded spot. Guarded drives (30 m/hr) do the same and also stop for rocks and targets.

Slopes and crater walls make the wheels slip, and the dark rippled sand patches slow you down further, so check where you ended up and correct on the next sol.

You start with a full 360° navcam mosaic. After that, queue NAVCAM frames for the end of each drive: 45° wide, pointed at any azimuth, 1 minute each. Hover the images to read stereo range.

Point at the map for coordinates Guarded VO Blind Slip low → high Likely end Target Rock Sand Navcam view

Navcam no images

Hover the images for stereo range. Click to mark a spot on the map.

Rover state last downlink

East0.0

North0.0

Heading000°

Uplink · Sol 1

End-of-drive imaging

Drive time0:00 / 3:00 h

Each sol allows 3 hours of drive time. Heading 0° is north and RIGHT turns clockwise; every 90° of turning costs the same time as 1 m of blind driving. Add G, VO or BLIND after a drive to override the mode (FWD 20 VO). VO and guarded drives end where you commanded, but slip costs them extra time and sand slows their tracking by up to half. The whole plan, imaging included, aborts the moment it reaches 3 hours. Guarded drives stop short of rocks and stop on a target. Blind and VO drives that hit a rock fault the rover and cost a recovery sol. Slopes and sand cause slip in every mode. NAVCAM frames (NAVCAM 090, or NAVCAM 090 ×3 for 135°) are 45° wide, cost 1 minute each, and are always taken after the drive.

Mission brief

Mission complete