Artificial intelligence is helping scientists identify minerals within rocks studied by the Perseverance rover.
Some scientists dream of exploring planets with “smart” spacecraft that know exactly what data to look for, where to find it, and how to analyze it. Although realizing this dream will take time, advances made with NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover offer promising steps in that direction.
For nearly three years, the rover mission has been testing a form of artificial intelligence that searches for minerals in the Red Planet’s rocks. This marks the first time AI has been used on Mars to make autonomous decisions based on real-time analysis of rock composition.
The software supports PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), a spectrometer developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. By mapping the chemical composition of minerals across a rock’s surface, PIXL allows scientists to determine whether the rock formed under conditions that may have supported microbial life in Mars’ ancient past.
Called “adaptive sampling,” the software autonomously positions the instrument close to a rock target, then looks at PIXL scans of the target to find minerals worth examining more deeply. Everything is done in real time, without the rover talking to mission controllers on Earth.
“We use PIXL’s artificial intelligence to learn key science,” said the instrument’s principal investigator, JPL’s Abigail Allwood. “Without it, you’ll see a hint of something interesting in the data, and then you’ll have to scan the rock again to study it more. This allows PIXL to reach a conclusion without humans examining the data.”
Data from Perseverance’s instruments, including PIXL, help scientists determine when to drill a rock core and seal it in a titanium metal tube so that it, along with other high-priority samples, could be brought back to Earth for further study as part of NASA. Mars sample return campaign.
Adaptive sampling is not the only application of AI on Mars. About 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) from Perseverance is NASA’s Curiosity, which pioneered a form of AI that allows the rover to autonomously destroy rocks with a laser based on their shape and color. Studying the gas that burns after each laser reveals the chemical composition of a rock. The Persistence features the same ability, as well as a more advanced form of AI that enables it to navigate without specific direction from Earth. Both rovers still rely on dozens of engineers and scientists to plan each day’s batch of hundreds of individual commands, but these digital smarts help both missions accomplish more in less time.
“The idea behind PIXL’s adaptive sampling is to help scientists find the needle in a pile of data, freeing them up time and energy to focus on other things,” said Peter Lawson, who led the adaptive sampling implementation forward than to withdraw from JPL. “Ultimately, it helps us gather the best science faster.”
AI helps PIXL in two ways. First, it positions the instrument precisely as the instrument is in close proximity to a rock target. Located at the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm, the spectrometer sits on six tiny robotic legs, called hexapods. PIXL’s camera repeatedly checks the distance between the instrument and a rock target to aid in positioning.
Temperature swings on Mars are large enough that Perseverance’s arm will expand or contract a microscopic amount, which could defeat the purpose of PIXL. The hexapod automatically adjusts the instrument to get extremely close without making contact with the rock.
“We have to make micrometer-scale adjustments to get the precision we need,” Allwood said. “He gets close enough to the rock to raise the hairs on the back of an engineer’s neck.”
Once PIXL is in place, another AI system has a chance to shine. PIXL scans an area of a rock the size of a postage stamp, firing a beam of X-rays thousands of times to create a network of microscopic dots. Each point reveals information about the chemical composition of the minerals present.
Minerals are essential to answering key questions about Mars. Depending on the rock, scientists may be looking for carbonates, which hide clues about how water may have formed the rock, or they may be looking for phosphates, which could have provided nutrients for microbes if it had been present in the Martian past. .
There’s no way for scientists to know in advance which of the hundreds of X-rays will pick up a particular mineral, but when the instrument finds a few minerals, it can automatically stop to collect more data—an action called “standstill.” tall .” As the system improves through machine learning, the list of minerals that PIXL can focus on for a long time is growing.
“PIXL is kind of a Swiss Army knife in that it can be configured depending on what scientists are looking for at a given time,” said JPL’s David Thompson, who helped develop the software. “Mars is a great place to test artificial intelligence as we have regular communications every day, giving us a chance to make changes along the way.”
When future missions travel deeper into the solar system, they will be out of touch longer than missions to Mars currently are. This is why there is a strong interest in developing more autonomy for missions as they go about and conduct science for the benefit of humanity.
A major objective for the Perseverance mission to Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and preserve Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), would send 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 lunar exploration approach to Mars, which includes the Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages the operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more on Persistence:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
News media contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600 / 202-358-1501
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
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