Who drives the Mars Rover?

Question

I'm signed-up to receive daily photographs that NASA posts on their web site everyday. Occassionally its an image taken of the Martian surface by the Exploration Rover Spirit or the Opportunity Rover. I'm wondering if a human at NASA's HQ actually remotely drives it like a video game or if it has a program that tells it what to do. What an awesome job that would be if it was a human driving it.

Answer 1

There is an actual engineer (a team of engineers, who work both rovers and work in shifts) who sits at a console in the MER control room at NASA JPL (Jet Propultion Laboratory), and enters the commands given to him to 'drive' the rover. (There is a separate console and driver for each rover).

There is no 'joystick' because it takes too long for the command to get to Mars (anywhere from about 4 to 20 minutes depending on where the Earth and Mars are in their orbits around the Sun). The 'driver' simply inputs driving and operating commands into the console, and pretty much waits for them to execute -- then does the next set of commands hours later.

I wouldn't mind that job -- I think it would be awesome, too!

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Answer 2

They don't acutally drive the rovers (a la a video game joystick) because of the time lag--it takes several minutes for a signal to travel to Mars. But it's not just running on automatic either.

What they do is survey the images, pick a rout for the next distance to travel, and send a set of commands. Each move the rovers make is thus in response to a customized set of instructions--but those computers are sophisticated. They can also override the instructions sent from Earth if the rover finds something unexpected.

But--in a few years you may see "real-time" driving of rovers on the moon--the time lag is only about 1-1/2 seconds (one-way)--close enough for a "ddriver" to remote-drive it And that may be a bigdeal--with such rovers on the moon, we could explore and locate resources much faster and more cheaply--and without risking people

Answer 3

Spirit and Opportunity both have the same basic system.

Humans plan the drive, and send a series of commands to the rovers.

The rovers execute the commands, using autonomous functions to avoid terrain hazards.

Then the rovers send the results back to Mission Control.

Repeat these steps until humans find the rover in the correct location for what the humans want it to do next.

Answer 4

There is no human driving it real time because of the time lag caused by the speed of light. JPL has a mock up of the immediate neighborhood of the rover based on photos. The driver makes moves on a mock up at JPL and the moves are stored as a program which is up linked to the rovers and executed at a later time. The moves are in very small increments.

Answer 5

This machine is driven by a humanoid which has been designed to meet outer space requiremtents by prototype NASA workers.

Answer 6

it is down by a pre-programmed computers and also takes commands from earth.