Autonomous Software

In CACM:  On Mars,the use of autonomous software.  " .... Among the most innovative applications NASA computer scientists have contributed to the mission is Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS), which analyzes images gathered by the rovers' navigation cameras to identify features of interest, typically rocks with certain preprogrammed characteristics, without needing synchronous communication with scientists on earth. This capability saves significant time and bandwidth on the deep space network. In fact, NASA considers AEGIS so innovative it won the agency's Software of the Year award for 2011... "