Maestro Science Activity Planner for Mars

NASA Software Catalog, JPL-45871

The Maestro Science Activity Planner (Maestro) combines cutting-edge visualization with sophisticated planning and simulation capabilities to provide and intuitive interface to the Mars Exploration Rovers. It achieved simultaneous successes in missions operations and technology development.

Maestro's 2D visualization components are the best in class, offering high performance, immersing visualization of images and terrain. In this version, the Maestro software includes a Map View utilizing an image from the HiRise satellite to create an interactive annotated rover traverse path and navigation camera (navcam) image overlay. It also includes an overhead mosaic capability that is made from navcam stereo data to create an overhead perspective image that is true to the terrain.

Maestro is easier to use and more powerful than it's predecessors. It is built upon the Java Eclipse Platform providing independent software allowing scientists the ability to obtain the speed and responsiveness of the software without the limitation of being on the operations console. Maestro is build around a browser-based UI paradigm that reduces complicated missions operations tasks to point-and-click. The visualization components of the software are more tightly coupled than in any similar tool, increasing performance and helping users to better understand the environment of the rover.

Maestro is consistently advancing the state of the art in its field. It is based on the open source project paradigm, Eclipse that enables it to take advantage of incorporating other open source projects increasing its capabilities and potential. In addition, it is significantly more portable and lightweight, and supports more platforms than other existing options.