Next-generation drone flight software is just one of 25 technologies for the Red Planet that the space agency funded for development this year.
When NASA engineers want to test a concept for exploring the Red Planet, they have to find ways to create Mars-like conditions here on Earth. Then they test, tinker, and repeat.
That’s why a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California took three research drones to California’s Death Valley National Park and the Mojave Desert earlier this year. They needed barren, featureless desert dunes to hone navigation software. Called Extended Robust Aerial Autonomy, the work is just one of 25 projects funded by the agency’s Mars Exploration Program this past year to push the limits of future technologies. Similar dunes on Mars confused the navigation algorithm of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during several of its last flights, including its 72nd and final flight on the Red Planet.
“Ingenuity was designed to fly over well-textured terrain, estimating its motion by looking at visual features on the ground. But eventually it had to cross over blander areas where this became hard,” said Roland Brockers, a JPL researcher and drone pilot. “We want future vehicles to be more versatile and not have to worry about flying over challenging areas like these sand dunes.”
Whether it’s new navigation software, slope-scaling robotic scouts, or long-distance gliders, the technology being developed by the Mars Exploration Program envisions a future where robots can explore all on their own — or even help astronauts do their work.
NASA scientists and engineers have been going to Death Valley National Park since the 1970s, when the agency was preparing for the first Mars landings with the twin Viking spacecraft. Rubbly volcanic boulders on barren slopes earned one area the name Mars Hill, where much of this research has taken place. Almost half a century later, JPL engineers tested the Perseverance rover’s precision landing system by flying a component of it in a piloted helicopter over the park.
For the drone testing, engineers traveled to the park’s Mars Hill and Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes in late April and early September. The JPL team received only the third-ever license to fly research drones in Death Valley. Temperatures reached as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius); gathered beneath a pop-up canopy, team members tracked the progress of their drones on a laptop.
The test campaign has already resulted in useful findings, including how different camera filters help the drones track the ground and how new algorithms can guide them to safely land in cluttered terrain like Mars Hill’s.
“It’s incredibly exciting to see scientists using Death Valley as a proving ground for space exploration,” said Death Valley National Park Superintendent Mike Reynolds. “It’s a powerful reminder that the park is protected not just for its scenic beauty or recreational opportunities, but as a living laboratory that actively helps us understand desert environments and worlds beyond our own.”
For additional testing during the three-day excursion, the team ventured to the Mojave Desert’s Dumont Dunes. The site of mobility system tests for NASA’s Curiosity rover in 2012, the rippled dunes there offered a variation of the featureless terrain used to test the flight software in Death Valley.
“Field tests give you a much more comprehensive perspective than solely looking at computer models and limited satellite images,” said JPL’s Nathan Williams, a geologist on the team who previously helped operate Ingenuity. “Scientifically interesting features aren’t always located in the most benign places, so we want to be prepared to explore even more challenging terrains than Ingenuity did.”
The California desert isn’t the only field site where Mars technology has been tested this year. In August, researchers from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston ventured to New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, another desert location that has hosted NASA testing for decades.
They were there with a doglike robot called LASSIE-M (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments for Mars). Motors in the robot’s legs measure physical properties of the surface that, when combined with other data, lets LASSIE-M shift gait as it encounters terrain that is softer, looser, or crustier — variations often indicative of scientifically interesting changes.
The team’s goal is to develop a robot that can scale rocky or sandy terrain — both of which can be hazardous to a rover — as it scouts ahead of humans and robots alike, using instruments to seek out new science.
Another Mars Exploration Program concept funded this past year is an autonomous robot that trades the compactness of the Ingenuity helicopter for the range that comes with wings. NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, has been developing the Mars Electric Reusable Flyer (MERF), which looks like a single wing with twin propellers that allow it to lift off vertically and hover in the air. (A fuselage and tail would be too heavy for this design.) While the flyer skims the sky at high speeds, instruments on its belly can map the surface.
At its full size, the MERF unfolds to be about as long as a small school bus. Langley engineers have been testing a half-scale prototype, sending it soaring across a field on the Virgina campus to study the design’s aerodynamics and the robot’s lightweight materials, which are critical to flying in Mars’ thin atmosphere.
With other projects focused on new forms of power generation, drills and sampling equipment, and cutting-edge autonomous software, there are many new ways for NASA to explore Mars in the future.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
[email protected]
Alise Fisher / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-617-4977 / 202-672-4780
[email protected] / [email protected]
2025-131
