NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA Workers Are Running The Mars Curiosity Rover Out Of Their Homes

Updated September 7, 2021

If there's any job on Earth that absolutely has to be done remotely, it's running NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. So, you wouldn't think much had changed for the Curiosity team amid the COVID-19 pandemic, would you?

But when you're operating a highly sophisticated piece of technology from at least 200,000,000 km away, even a regular work day isn't exactly just another day at the office. Having to operate Curiosity from their homes has required some trademark NASA adaptation from the Curiosity team.

Operating Curiosity isn't nearly as straightforward as you might expect.

Wikimedia | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PIA16239_High-Resolution_Self-Portrait_by_Curiosity_Rover_Arm_Camera.jpg

It's not like a science version of Grand Theft Auto, that's for sure. The commands that end up getting sent to the rover can take as long as 20 minutes to cross the gap between the planets. So, each series of movements is meticulously planned and tested by at least 20 people, while dozens of others are consulted and weigh in with their expertise as well.

"We're usually all in one room, sharing screens, images and data. People are talking in small groups and to each other from across the room," team leader Alicia Allbaugh said.

So, like so many of us now, the Curiosity team has to rely on video conferences, phone calls, and messaging apps to coordinate everything.

Twitter | @MarsCuriosity

NASA says that their day's planning has been extended by one to two hours as they make sure all their communications between the various groups are both thorough and clear.

"I probably monitor about 15 chat channels at all times," said science operations leader Carrie Bridge. "You're juggling more than you normally would."

The team is also making do without the highly specialized tech they would normally have access to at JPL.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

They have headsets and monitors and all that, but on a normal work day, Curiosity's planners review 3D images through specialized goggles that switch between the left and right eyes at high speed, and need to be hooked up to high-performance computers with advanced graphics cards.

So, without access to either the goggles and working on normal laptops, they've switched over to classic red-blue 3D glasses.

The team is also dealing with the same work-from-home challenges the rest of us are.

Which means that, yes, they've had discussions about how to handle things like cats jumping on keyboards.

Can you imagine someone's needy feline wrecking a $2.5 billion piece of hardware that's currently on a different planet? It would definitely be a cat thing to do.

However, it's been a success so far.

Two days after the Curiosity team started working remotely, after several tests and one full practice run, they successfully drilled into the surface of Mars and obtained a rock sample.

'It's classic, textbook NASA," Bridge said. "We're presented with a problem and we figure out how to make things work. Mars isn't standing still for us; we're still exploring."

h/t: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Filed Under:

Science