Introduction — A New Era Beyond Earth For the first time in a generation, humanity sent astronauts beyond low Earth orbit — not simply to explore, but to fundamentally redefine how we…
Space autonomy is the ability of spacecraft, landers, rovers and orbital robots to sense their surroundings, make decisions and act without waiting for instructions from Earth.
Signal delays — over a second each way to the Moon and many minutes to Mars — make onboard decision-making essential for landing, navigation, docking, fault recovery and science.
Every technology we track has its own explainer, latest news and research.
AutoNav self-driving across the Martian surface.
Vision-based navigation for a pinpoint lunar landing.
Autonomous optical navigation around a binary asteroid.
Natural Feature Tracking guided its sample collection.
Explainers appear here once posts are filed in the Explainers category.
Research briefings appear here once posts are filed in the Research category.