NASA teams carry out a field test in March 2026 with ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), a prototype four-wheeled rover built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover is driven across the Colorado Desert near Plaster City, California, to evaluate mobility and robotic autonomy technologies under real off-road conditions. According to NASA and Phys.org, ERNEST functions as a test bed for autonomy software intended for future missions, including potential lunar exploration that would require higher driving speeds and substantially greater mileage than what current planetary rovers can typically achieve.
During the test, the rover travels about 16 miles (26 kilometers) with minimal intervention from engineers monitoring the mission. The work focuses on improving how the rover navigates and operates on extreme sloped terrain, combining advanced mobility with autonomy capabilities. The field trial is part of broader NASA efforts to develop and validate technologies that could support next-generation rovers for missions to the Moon and, in related testing goals, Mars.
