Rover Operations Center
Meet the ROC. A center of excellence for current and future rover, aerial, and other surface missions, the Rover Operations Center at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory leverages JPL’s decades of experience in planetary rover operations. The ROC will support partnerships and technology transfer to catalyze the next generation of Moon and Mars surface missions.
What is the ROC?
Driving innovation through partnership
As NASA’s only federally funded research and development center, JPL can collaborate with industry, academia, government agencies, national laboratories, and other NASA centers.
Operationalizing expertise
The ROC offers tools, teams, processes training, and facilities for operations success, including systems engineering, integration, and test (SEIT). Other support includes onboard autonomy/AI, resources for orbital and interplanetary communications planning and scheduling, critical anomaly response capabilities, and surge staffing support.
Revolutionizing mission capabilities
Over the past 30 years, JPL rovers have transformed what autonomy can do on other worlds. The ROC is developing the next generation of tools for success — in flight or on the surface — delivering engineering foundation models, digital twins, mission-adapted AI models, edge AI-augmented autonomy stack solutions, AI-assisted operations automation, and more.
Catalyzing the next generation of Moon and Mars surface missions.
How to reach us
Email ROC@jpl.nasa.gov to explore how we can partner.
CL#25-4839