Results from the First Year and a Half of Mars 2020 Robotic Operations

Mars 2020 Robotic Operations is responsible for the development, planning and Mars execution of robotics aspects of the mission. This includes the Perseverance rover's mobility, manipulation, and sampling operations, and the Ingenuity helicopter's flights. As of October 2022 (Martian Solar Day 562, or sol 562), the rover has driven 13,179.5m and collected 15 samples, while the helicopter has logged 32 flights, covering 7281m, with an overall flight time of 3467 seconds. Perseverance and Ingenuity have accomplished several firsts such as coring and caching samples autonomously, and demonstrating powered flight on Mars. Perseverance has also set new planetary rover records such as the longest continuation drive distance (699.9m with no human review), longest single-sol autonomous drive distance (319m), and total autonomously evaluated drive distance (11,594m out of 13,172m total, i.e. 88% of all driving, an order of magnitude more than previous NASA Mars rover missions). This paper presents results from the first year and a half of Mars operations to highlight the operations approach that enabled this success, the challenges encountered, and lessons learned. Challenges include an unexpected reboot while driving that led to the discovery of a race condition in the rover flight software, pebbles unexpectedly interfering with key sampling hardware, the Martian winter temporarily grounding the helicopter, and difficult communication situations between the rover and helicopter that arise during periods of limited mobility. This paper also describes the sampling sol path, which is used by the operations team to execute sampling activities in a repeatable manner consistent with the goals of the science team and the capabilities of the sampling hardware. Abrading and sampling performance to date is evaluated, with a particular emphasis on changes to operations as a result of the soft rocks encountered in the Delta region on the western border of Jezero Crater.