Mars Rover gets super smart

The Curiosity Mars Rover is now smart enough to pick its own targets for exploration, according to a new study. The secret to Curiosity's better brain was a software update sent from the ground in October 2015, called the Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS). This was the first time artificial intelligence had been tried on a remote probe, and the results have shown that similar AI techniques could be applied to future missions, according to the NASA scientists working on the project. AEGIS allows the rover to be "trained" to identify rocks with certain characteristics that scientists on the ground want to investigate. This is valuable because Curiosity's human controllers can't be in direct contact with the rover all the time.