Topic
7 facts from 2 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2020
Vandi Verma is chief engineer for NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which includes the Perseverance Rover and the Ingenuity Helicopter.
“I'm also the chief engineer for the Mars, uh, 2020 mission, which consists of the Perseverance Rover and the Ingenuity Helicopter.”
Undated
The next episode features Vandi Verma, chief engineer of Perseverance Robotic Operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Shervin and I venture into the use of AI in outer space with Vandi Verma, chief engineer of Perseverance Robotic Operations”
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Vandi Verma says 88% of the driving done by the Perseverance rover has been autonomous.
“In fact, with Perseverance, 88% of the driving that we've done is autonomous driving”
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Vandi Verma says Perseverance is collecting and caching samples that are planned to be brought back to Earth for the first time.
“we have a mission to collect and cache a certain number of samples with Perseverance. Because for the first time, we are actually going to bring them back to Earth.”
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Vandi Verma says the SuperCam instrument fires a laser at a rock to create a plasma that it studies with a telescopic lens.
“It has a laser, and from a distance, you can shoot a laser at a rock and it creates a plasma, and we study that with a telescopic lens.”
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Vandi Verma says NASA has researched 'novelty detection,' which would help the rover find things it hasn't already examined, but it was not yet deployed.
“it's called novelty detection, which we don't actually yet have deployed, but find what we haven't already looked at.”
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Vandi Verma says Perseverance's software has over 64,000 explicit parameters stored in non-volatile memory.
“We have over 64,000 explicit parameters. These are saved in non volatile memory.”
Episodes