Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover is being given more free will

Nasa is giving its Curiosity rover more autonomy on its lonely mission across the desolate surface of Mars. Curiosity is normally piloted remotely by humans, but signals can take as long as 24 minutes to get from Earth to Mars. Nasa has decided to allow Curiosity's autonomous systems, which are used to pick out rocks to fire lasers at, more control to streamline missions. Since May 2016, AEGIS accurately selected desired targets over 2.5 km (1.5 miles) of unexplored Martian terrain 94 per cent of the time (left chart), compared to the 24 per cent (right chart) expected without the software. Curiosity's AEGIS software, or Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science, is used to direct and fire Curiosity's ChemCam instrument.