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NASA JPL: Mars Exploration Rovers

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Staying power of JPL's mechanical geologists has exceeded NASA scientists' expectations, and led to Xilinx FPGAs in the latest Mars mission.

In early August, 2012, NASA celebrated the touchdown of the “Curiosity” Mars Scientific Lab. Landing the latest rover vehicle, which is the size of a small car, was a complex maneuver that involved a crane-like mechanism. During its two-year mission, “Curiosity” will act as a robotic geologist, photographing and beaming back highly detailed images of the red planet, as well as drilling and analyzing samples. The camera subsystem on “Curiosity” leverages Xilinx space-grade devices, which contribute to the images being transmitted back to Earth.

NASA launched the first successful Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) in 2003, in search of data about the history of water on Mars. The rover’s designers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) expected each rover to be operational on Mars for only three months. However, the robust design has exceeded everyone’s expectations. In January 2010, the MERs celebrated their sixth year of operation returning valuable information about the geological history of the planet.

In creating the first incredible MER, the JPL team used radiation-tolerant Xilinx® XQVR4000XL FPGAs, the state of the art in FPGA space-grade technology at the time of the design, for both the landing and on-surface operation of the robots. Specifically, the XQVR4062 FPGAs went into each MER landing craft to control the crucial pyrotechnic operations during a rover’s multiphase descent and landing procedure.

NASA also used XQVR1000s in the MER Motor Control Board, which oversees the motors for the wheels, steering, arms, cameras and various instrumentation, enabling the rovers to travel about the planet’s often silt-like surface and negotiate various obstacles. On-board reprogrammability of the FPGAs also allowed JPL to make design changes and updates right up to launch time and even after the rovers had landed.

The success of the Mars rovers has led JPL and many other companies to employ Xilinx XQVR and newer Xilinx space-grade FPGAs in a number of missions, including “Curiosity,” the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Mars Science Lab.

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