NASA's staff is currently working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic — and this includes the team currently piloting the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars.
NASA, alongside many other workplaces, has had to shut its doors during the coronavirus pandemic. For engineers and scientists working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory responsible for driving the Curiosity Mars rover, this meant setting up systems so they could continue to communicate with the rover while all stuck in their homes.
It took everyone a few hours to acclimatize to setting up all their windows and chats so they fit onto home monitor screens. "We figured it out within like two, three hours. We were sort of getting into the groove and understanding the ebb and flow and the pace," she said. The test went off surprisingly well, with the rover receiving and successfully executing a set of orders.
But the goggles require heavy-duty graphics cards normally used in gaming computers, and it wasn't going to be practical to get these working at home, so NASA found a less high-tech solution., the same kind you would use to watch a 3D movie. Gildner says he pops the glasses on for about 10 to 15 minutes at a time about three times a day to look around at where the rover is.
As a planner, Gildner works on the uplink side of the team and said it was a struggle to mimic this flow of communication. "We are used to being able to have everyone in one room and have some conversations that are within smaller groups in one room, and then some conversations that participate with everyone," he said."What we've done is actually we set up multiple teleconferences all at once.
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