Rover in 'SAFER Valley'

The SAFER field trials concluded on Saturday 12 October 2013. A total of six plans for the test rover were produced at the remote control centre in the UK and executed at the field test location in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Some of the plans corresponded to more than one martian day or ‘sol’. Before the start of the trial the field team had identified a location that was an interesting playground to simulate a martian site for the remote team, dubbed ‘SAFER Valley’. In the simulated scenario the rover started from the yellow circle, from where panoramic images were taken, as if they were provided by the rover. The real rover started from the point indicated with the red circle ‘starting point’ in the figure above, to save time. Then it was commanded to drive to the white-toned patch, which the field team referred to as ‘pond’.