Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
A Nasa rover has been racing across a California desert, and it is not lost.
It has been training for the Moon.
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In March 2026, a four-wheel rover called Ernest, short for Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain, trundled across the Colorado Desert near Plaster City.
Built at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the prototype is a testbed for autonomy software, the computer brain that lets a rover drive and make its own decisions, without anyone steering it from Earth.
WHAT MAKES THE ERNEST ROVER SO SPECIAL?
Ernest is designed to conquer extreme sloped terrain, the steep, rocky surfaces that have long defeated robotic explorers.
Its advanced mobility system keeps it stable and gripping the ground even when one wheel rides up on a rock, exactly the sort of crater rim or canyon scientists most want to reach.
HOW FAST CAN THE ERNEST ROVER DRIVE?
Trailed by engineers, Ernest covered about 16 miles over 37 hours of drive time. That is more than 10 times the speed at which Nasa’s Perseverance rover crawls across Mars, where caution makes progress painfully slow. Ernest is built to cover far greater distances, far quicker.
Speed is not vanity. A future lunar mission will need a rover that travels much faster and far further than today’s machines manage. Ernest is Nasa’s bid to prove that a self-driving robot can have both speed and stamina.
WHY DID NASA TEST THE ROVER IN THE DARK?
The team drove Ernest from dusk till dawn on purpose. The Moon’s polar regions are draped in long, deep shadows that hide the ground and confuse a rover’s cameras.
By teaching Ernest to read these light-starved scenes, engineers are making sure it can navigate safely where ordinary vision fails.
WHO IS FUNDING THE ERNEST ROVER PROJECT?
Work began in 2022 with internal JPL funds and is now backed by Nasa’s Mars Exploration Program.
The desert has spoken. The Moon is next.
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
