NASA's Perseverance rover twin OPTIMISM begins Martian terrain test

NASA is currently busy with its rover that is exploring the Martian landscape and drilling rock samples to store them. But this rover is not the famous Perseverance, but rather its twin- OPTIMISM, which was introduced last year. Short for Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments Sent to Mars, the rover is a vehicle system testbed that is exploring the mock-up of the real Mars, the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

NASA begins testing OPTIMISM

A twin of the Perseverance rover which is exploring Jezero Crater on Mars, OPTIMISM is being trained to perform a number of jobs in the coming weeks. According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the rover will navigate the Mars Yard’s slopes and hazards, drill sample cores from boulders, and store the samples in metal tubes – just like Perseverance is doing in its hunt for signs of ancient microbial life. Notably, this is the first time this month that the agency has started testing this newly upgraded rover. 

The tests help ensure that OPTIMISM’s twin on Mars can safely execute the commands sent by controllers on Earth. Besides, they also could potentially reveal unexpected problems Perseverance might encounter on Mars. Bryan Martin, the flight software and testbeds manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the rover, said-

The size and shape of rocks in the visual field – will they turn into obstacles or not? We test a lot of that, figure out what kinds of things to avoid. What we have safely traversed around here has informed rover drivers in planning their traverses on Mars. We’ve done so much testing on the ground we can be confident in it. It works.

NASA's Mars Yard is as long as a doubles tennis court and twice as wide and has served as a testing ground for many a fully-engineered rover twin. OPTIMISM was first rolled out in September 2020 and underwent mobility tests where it scaled slopes, dodged obstacles, or helped rover planners puzzle out new paths on the simulated patch of Mars. And as mentioned above, if problems arise on Perseverance on Mars, OPTIMISM can be used as a platform to figure out what went wrong and also how to fix it. 

(Image: Twitter/@NASAJPL)