• NASA engineers reprogrammed Mars helicopter’s Snapdragon chip to run the rover instead, reconfiguring system from 140 million miles away - repurposes its ‘ancient’ unused Qualcomm 801 SoC, accurate to within 10 inches The “ancient” Snapdragon 801 chip for mid-range smartphones is still powerful enough to give the rover accurate directions. • Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. • You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful NASA’s Perseverance rover has been running into issues with its autonomous navigation systems on Mars, wherein its systems required guidance from Earth to determine its precise location. • While its onboard systems can determine the general area where it’s at, it still needs guidance from human controllers to avoid dangerous terrain. • This did not prevent Perseverance from exploring the red planet, but it has seriously hampered its autonomous range. • That’s because even though communication between the two planets usually takes about 24 minutes on average, NASA said that it can only phone home once a day to know where exactly it is.

Article Summaries:

  • NASA engineers have repurposed the idle Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chip from the retired Ingenuity Mars helicopter to improve the Perseverance rover’s autonomous navigation. By feeding panoramic images into the chip, the rover creates a bird‑eye view of its surroundings and matches it against orbital satellite terrain maps, enabling the rover to pinpoint its location on Mars to within about 10 inches. This “Mars Global Localization” system replaces the need for daily Earth‑based guidance, allowing Perseverance to travel longer distances independently and increasing its scientific reach.
  • NASA engineers remotely reprogrammed the idle Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chip from the retired Ingenuity helicopter to aid the Perseverance rover’s navigation on Mars. The chip now processes panoramic images taken by the rover, converts them into a bird‑sight view, and matches them with orbital satellite terrain maps to pinpoint the rover’s location within about 10 inches-effectively giving Perseverance a GPS‑like system. This “Mars Global Localization” upgrade addresses the rover’s prior reliance on daily Earth‑based guidance, enabling longer autonomous drives and more efficient exploration. The update demonstrates the feasibility of reconfiguring spacecraft systems from 140 million miles away.

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