M2020

Background

The Mars 2020 rover launched 30 July 2020 from Kennedy Space Center and landed 18 February 2021. Originally the plan was for the onboard scheduler to be activated after the first Earth Mars Solar conjunction in December 2021 but this was delayed until October 2023. The onboard scheduler helps the rover independently adapt to execution variances on the surface of Mars, enabling the rover to operate more efficiently. Specifically, if activities finish earlier or later than expected, the onboard scheduler will allow the rover to extend or add activities to perform more science, or delay activities to be performed later.

Problem

Efficiently operating a rover on the surface of Mars is challenging. Two factors combine to make this job particularly difficult: 1) communication opportunities are limited, 2) certain aspects of rover performance are difficult to predict. With limited communications, the rover must be given instructions on what to do for one or more Martian days at a time. In addition, the duration of many rover activities can be hard to predict, which leads to unpredictable energy use. Traditionally, conservatism is used to keep the rover safe and healthy. This approach, however can lead to a measurable loss in rover productivity. To regain some of this productivity, the Mars 2020 mission is prototyping the use of onboard scheduling software. The primary objective of this software is to identify and utilize opportunities that arise when actual rover performance is more efficient than the original, conservative prediction.

Impact

An analysis of Mars Science Laboratory operations [Gaines et al. 2016] indicates that significant onboard resources are made available during execution that cannot be used due to current rovers inability to change the uploaded schedule. If an onboard scheduler can leverage such resources, it can significantly improve rover productivity.

Status

Status as of January 2025 is as follows.

1. Post landing, post checkout (Summer 2021): Copilot used in ground operations to automatically schedule wake/sleep and preheat activities with manually planned fixed time Master/Submaster (MSM) primary activities.

2. November 2021: Constraint-based planning (CBP) enabled in ground operations. CBP can automatically schedule (eg find times) for primary (science and engineering) activities. These activities are uplinked as fixed time MSM activities.

3. October 2023: Onboard automated scheduling goes live as the primary operations method of the Perseverance Rover.

4. As of 29th January 2025, OBP has operated for 429 Martian days (sols) and has: executed over 7800 activities requested by scientists and engineers, driven over 12 kilometers, acquired over 70,000 images, and collected 4 rock core samples.

A series of 6 lectures on the M2020 Onboard Planner were presented at JPL. Slides from these presentations are available below.

Topic	Speaker	Date
Overview of Simple Planner	Moffi	December 5th, 2024
Onboard Planner: Flight Software	Gaines	February 4th, 2025
Onboard Planner: Trusted AI on Mars	Reich, Chien	February 18th, 2025
Simple Planner: Ground Tools for Operations	Connell	February 25th, 2025
Simple Planner: Systems Engineering Operations with Autonomy	Hazelrig	March 11th, 2025
Rollout of the Simple Planner	Waldram	March 19th, 2025

Publications

Team

Dr. Daniel Gaines
Gregg Rabideau
Vincent Wong
Elyse Fosse
Stephen Kuhn
James Biehl
Eddie Benowitz
Dr. Steve Chien
Wayne Chi
Jagriti Agrawal
Shannon Towey
Sarah Bhaskaran