{"id":200970,"date":"2025-12-25T07:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/200970\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T07:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:59:13","slug":"mars-rover-reaches-new-milestone-by-driving-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/200970\/","title":{"rendered":"Mars rover reaches new milestone \u2014 by driving itself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover has traveled nearly 25 miles after five years, a new milestone, in part because of its self-driving capabilities. <\/p>\n<p>Scientists choose the rover\u2019s destinations, but it now travels mostly autonomously, traversing unexpected obstacles as it collects samples. <\/p>\n<p>Similar to (earthbound) self-driving cars, the robot can <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/space\/nasa-mars-rover-drive-autonomously\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">scan for potential hazards<\/a> up to 50 feet ahead of it. <\/p>\n<p>It may be a solo act for a while: Despite hopes that the US would send another spacecraft to retrieve the Perseverance\u2019s Martian rock specimens by 2026, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/space\/2025\/12\/nasa-will-soon-find-out-if-the-perseverance-rover-can-really-persevere-on-mars\/\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">no one is building such a lander<\/a>,\u201d and NASA\u2019s strategy for such a project, which would cost billions, remains undecided, Ars Technica wrote. <\/p>\n<p>The good news: The rover appears to be in excellent health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover has traveled nearly 25 miles after five years, a new milestone, in part because&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-200970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}