According to a blog post published by the technology media scitechdaily on August 11.

The report states that an engineering team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has discovered a blind spot in NASA's long-standing testing methods for lunar and Martian rovers on Earth.

The engineering team pointed out that NASA primarily reduces the weight of test models to simulate the low gravity environments of the Moon or Mars, but ignores the fact that Earth's stronger gravity compacts sand, leading to overestimating the rovers' maneuverability. This blind spot caused the Spirit Mars rover to become stuck in sand in 2009 and unable to escape.

The team used Chrono, an open-source simulation software developed independently, to simulate NASA's planned lunar mission, the VIPER rover. Simulation results show that under the weak lunar gravity, the soil is softer, making the rover more susceptible to slipping or sinking, and the actual risk is far greater than predicted by ground-based tests.

Professor Negrut, the study's lead, noted that only by considering the effects of gravity on both the rover and the soil can a true assessment of the rover's performance in an extraterrestrial environment be achieved.

The "Chrono" software has not only enabled breakthroughs in space missions but is also used by hundreds of institutions worldwide to simulate complex mechanical systems. The software is completely open source, freely available to users worldwide, and continuously maintained and upgraded by the team.

The team, led by Professor Dan Negrut, stated that this achievement not only addresses the shortcomings of traditional testing but also highlights the unique value of academia in developing innovative tools. The team currently receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, and NASA to ensure the software's continued optimization and global reach.