Navigating Mars and Beyond
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Accelerating Martian Rover Exploration
"You can think of the LN-200 as a high performance motion sensor," said Bill Harvey, the LN-200 product line manager for Northrop Grumman Navigation Systems Division in Woodland Hills, Calif. "It's filled with three fiber optic gyros and three linear accelerometers that detect rates of angular motion and changes in linear velocity, or acceleration."
According to NASA, Perseverance will use its IMU to help navigate the Martian surface safely as it looks for rocks that contain indicators of previous microbial life, drills core samples from Martian rocks and soil, and tests ways to produce oxygen from the carbon dioxide Martian atmosphere. Key to that navigation will be the IMU's calculation of the rover's attitude, i.e. its orientation about three-axes relative to the Martian surface.
