NASA has admitted that while Curiosity has been a well received science experiment, the rover in effect does not have a brain of its own. In fact the instructions passed to it from the mission control established on Earth take forty minutes to get to it. In order to overcome this drawback future rovers will be smarter in design.

Now if Curiosity meets a stone en route it will take a photograph and send it back to the handler sitting on Earth, who will then instruct it on how to proceed. In an updated version of the space rover it will be able to ascertain what the rock it sees is using comparative date and then decide on its own if it needs to be further investigated or not.

The micro management that takes place in the case of the Mars Rover Curiosity will be highly limited in future, more advanced rovers built for new missions says NASA. Unlike how each day’s schedule is uploaded for Curiosity from the mission control center, the future rovers will be able to fix their own agenda based on how and where they are located.

Of course some degree of control will still be maintained over the science projects from Earth. They are even working on over ruling a certain task that the rover might fix for itself on a given day and replace it with something the scientists want done that day. It will be an exciting new world for the rovers of the next mission.