Preparing for a Productive Low Power Future on the Curiosity Rover

Power operations are crucial to the efficiency of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover. The rover’s ability to perform experiments and make progress along the drive path is directly limited by the available energy. The degrading power source required a change to operations to ensure a productive future. The team updated modeling of expected energy consumption of nominal rover activities and increased the modeled battery capacity by 15\% points. On board the rover the team reduced daily energy consumption of communications hardware by 3\% state of charge, and reduced cell spread on the battery by over 100 mV. From these improvements, the team saw an average decrease of 50 Whrs of wasted energy per sol, and an average improvement of 10\% in modeled state of charge. Modeling of the next extended mission proved that MSL can continue productive science operations for the next two Martian years.