Interview
Q 9:  Did you have any feedback or learning mechanisms as you went along? Were you able to learn how to better navigate?
 
A 9: 
We had done a year's worth of testing before landing. Of course, we had a seven-month cruise to Mars, which gave us a bunch of time. But we would test in various locations on Earth. One of our favorite places was a sand-filled room which we called the sand box, with Mars-like sand and rocks. And in the room was a Lander which was almost identical to the real Lander, and a duplicate Rover. We had someone we nicknamed the Gremlin, who would set up rocks and challenging terrain, little hills, difficult to drive configurations, and we would drive the Rover through the different terrain.

We were doing those tests many times per week. And I was not allowed to go into the sandbox until after the test, and I had to perceive that little room from the perspective of the Lander cameras only, just like we would on the real mission. That was very useful, because we could see how to interpret rock sizes and things like that, and how the Rover would drive. What wasn't very realistic for us, was that we had Earth gravity, and on Mars, the Rover was subject to less gravity and could drive higher hills, and it was actually more capable. That was one of the things we had to calibrate: how it would drive on the unknown Martian surface. We learned that early on, and kind of iterated how we would drive it. This helped a lot.

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