Opportunity uses its Rock Abrasion Tool to clear away the top of a rock. MAPGEN allowed more activities such as this to be efficiently scheduled for the rovers each day.

It is fairly typical of NASA space missions to have a command cycle several days, or sometimes even weeks long.

In the case of the Mars Exploration Rover mission (MER), mission commanders wanted a command cycle of 19 hours. This would allow the rovers on Mars to collect new data each Martian day and cover much more terrain in their search for evidence that water once covered the surface of Mars.

Having humans develop activity plans for the rovers within this time frame was challenging, but possible. During operational readiness tests, mission planners manually created activity plans for the twin Martian rovers Spirt and Opportunity. Mission scientists ranked their activity requests, such as moving to a rock and taking a scientific measurement, through a prioritization scheme. Mission planners then manual created activity plans, with only the highest priority activities being included.

MAPGEN, on the other hand, was able to deliver astonishing results for the MER mission. It allowed mission controllers to create activity plans which included not only the highest priority activities, but almost all of the activities requested. And when a low priority activity was not included in the plan, it was usually as a result of time or resource limitations of the rovers themselves

This allowed for very efficient work days on Mars. It has been estimated that the MAPGEN toolset has increased scientific return between 20% and 30% for the MER mission.