When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.An image taken from one of Perseverance’s cameras with the rover in the bottom right of the image and a long windy trail of tire tracks in the reddish brownish dirt of Mars behind it. | Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechNASA has given its Perseverance Mars rover a powerful new ability to determine its exact location on the Red Planet without waiting for instructions from Earth, effectively giving the six-wheeled explorer its own version of GPS.Unlike on Earth, Mars has no network of navigation satellites. Instead, robotic missions including Perseverance have long depended on onboard sensors and cameras, imagery from orbiting spacecraft and guidance from mission teams millions of miles away to figure out precisely where they are.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement”Imagine you’re alone in a vast desert, with no roads and no maps, and you only get one phone call a day to ask, ‘Where am I?'” Vandi Verma, a space roboticist at JPL and a member of the Perseverance engineering team, said in a video released Feb. 18 announcing the update. “That’s what NASA’s Perseverance rover has had to do on Mars for five years.”This panorama from Perseverance is composed of five stereo pairs of navigation camera images that the rover matched to orbital imagery in order to pinpoint its position on Feb. 2, 2026, using a technology called Mars Global Localization. | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech”For pinpoint accuracy, it needed humans back on Earth,” she added. “But not anymore.”Since landing in Jezero Crater in February 2021, the car-sized Perseverance has tracked its position by analyzing geological features in images taken every few feet and factoring in wheel slippage to estimate how far it has traveled.Small errors build up over time, and, on longer drives, those inaccuracies can leave the rover unsure of its position by more than 100 feet (35 meters). If it calculates that it may be too close to hazardous terrain, the rover may stop early and wait for clarification from Earth, according to a NASA statement.Advertiseme …
