NASA's Curiosity Mars rover still operating as team works from home

"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," said Curiosity team leader Alicia Allbaugh.

By ZACHARY KEYSER
NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover snaps a self-portrait at a site called Vera Rubin Ridge on the Martian surface (photo credit: REUTERS)
NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover snaps a self-portrait at a site called Vera Rubin Ridge on the Martian surface
(photo credit: REUTERS)
With shelter-in-place orders sweeping the United States into lockdown, forcing citizens to hunker down for the long haul within their homes, the team operating the NASA Curiosity Mars rover have recently faced abnormal new challenges in their quest navigating the surface of Mars during the coronavirus pandemic.
Even though the team no longer has the ability to use government facilities to perform their everyday responsibilities throughout this time, it has not stopped the exploration crew from continuing their mission of guiding the rover across Mars - the only caveat is for now mission control is located within their respective homes.
On March 20, 2020, after a few weeks of preparation to go completely remote as a group for the first time, the team seemlessly sent commands to the Mars rover to which it "executed as expected" without a soul present in the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, according to NASA. The rover's task for the day was to drill a rock sample at a location the research team dubbed "Edinburgh."
According to NASA, preparations began with distributing headsets, monitiors and other various equipment needed for each member of the team to effectively do their job from the comfort of their own home. The team also ran several test runs and a full practice before they embarked on their mission from home.
However, there were some concessions that had to be made with the switch to remote working.
Planners, operators and engineers, who rely heavily on high quality 3D imagery pulled from the rover in order to best plan Curiosity's route as well as the length to which they can extend its robotic arms out to, had to downgrade the quality of software that they are accustomed to experiencing at the lab so that they could run the programs on their personal computers - switching to "simple red-blue 3D glasses" in lieu of the high-tech goggles they regularly use.
The rover is operated by a team of 20 people or so, who individually assist in developing and sending Curiosity commands from Earth, and normally all work in unison within a confined space from the lab so they are always within earshot of one another.
"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," said Curiosity team leader Alicia Allbaugh.
Once the shelter-in-place ordinates reached California, the team began running several video conferences at the same time in order to replicate their workflow remotely. The amount of commands they can send out to the rover each day has been limited due to the work-from-home situation the team has been tasked with dealing with - adding an extra hour or two of setup before the tasks can be completed.
"I probably monitor about 15 chat channels at all times," said science operations team chief Carrie Bridge. "You're juggling more than you normally would."
"I still do my normal routine, but virtually. It's classic, textbook NASA," Bridge added. "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."


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