to elucidate the planet's past climate, water activity, and habitability.Science is MER's primary driver, so making best use of the scientific instruments, within the available resources, is a crucial aspect of the mission. To address this criticality, the MER project team selected MAPGEN (Mixed Initiative Activity Plan Generator) as an activity-planning tool.MAPGEN combines two existing systems, each with a strong heritage: the APGEN activity-planning tool 1 from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Europa planning and scheduling system 2 from NASA Ames Research Center. This article discusses the issues arising from combining these tools in this mission's context. Combining systemsIn a most exciting development, two NASA roversnamed Spirit and Opportunity-were slated to arrive at the Red Planet in January, at two scientifically distinct sites. (Spirit arrived successfully on 3 January, with Opportunity scheduled to arrive 24 January-see Figures 1 and 2.) Each rover will have an operational lifetime of 90 sols (Martian days) or more and can traverse an integrated distance of one kilometer or more, although the maximum range from the landing site might be less. Scientifically, MER seeks to • Determine the aqueous, climatic, and geologic history of a site where on Mars conditions might have been favorable to the preservation of evidence of prebiotic or biotic processes • Identify hydrologic, hydrothermal, and other processes that have operated at the landing site • Identify and investigate Martian rocks and soils that have the highest-possible chance of preserving evidence of ancient environmental conditions and possible prebiotic or biotic activity • Respond to other discoveries revealed by rover-based exploration Each sol, operations personnel on Earth receive telemetry from the rovers. On the basis of the downloaded data, they must construct, verify, and uplink a detailed sequence of commands for the next sol to the rovers. Thus, operations personnel must formulate a viable sequence that satisfies the mission goals within tight deadlines. To help address this critical need, MAPGEN can automatically generate plans and schedules for science and associated engineering activities; assist in hypothesis testing, such as what-if analysis on various scenarios; support plan editing; analyze resource usage; and perform constraint enforcement and maintenance.APGEN has served as a multimission tool for several flight projects (including Cassini and Deep Impact), while Europa flew onboard NASA's Deep Space 1 as part of a technology experiment to demonstrate the first onboard T he Mars Exploration Rover mission is one of NASA's most ambitious science missions to date.Launched in the summer of 2003, each rover carries instruments for conducting remote and in situ observations
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