NASAs Mars Perseverance rover obtained this image utilizing its Left Mastcam-Z video camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rovers mast. Who controls a Mars rover? Simply as no one ant is strong or clever enough to build an ant hill on its own, none of us is smart enough or capable adequate to style, construct, test, or run a Mars rover on our own. In that way, the rover is far more than a robot on Mars.
As one of the thousands of engineers and scientists who have worked on Perseverance, Ive come to see the task as an ant hill. Just as no one ant is wise or strong enough to construct an ant hill on its own, none of us is clever enough or capable adequate to design, develop, test, or operate a Mars rover on our own. Rather, just as with an ant colony, we just get the job done through the emergent intelligence that stems from every little interaction we have with each other, making us much better than the amount of our parts.
In the last month, this has actually been on full screen as we have actually packed a brand-new version of flight software application, chose the next core sample target at the “Brac” outcrop, and drilled at that place. It couldnt be any other way as each of these jobs is complicated, requires proficiency in very various abilities, and takes much more hours than a bachelor or even a single group might manage.
Working on a system as complex as Perseverance is awe and humbling inspiring. As deeply as I comprehend my own work, the design of the rover, and the ways we operate it, theres simply so a lot more that I dont know. And there always will be. However thats not an issue because any place my understanding ends, a coworkers starts. Because method, the rover is far more than a robot on Mars. Its an extension of the minds and the community of engineers and researchers who have worked on it. Its a shining beacon of human awareness on another world.
Composed by Matt Muszynski, Vehicle Systems Engineer at NASA/JPL.
NASAs Mars Perseverance rover got this image using its Left Mastcam-Z cam. Mastcam-Z is a set of cams located high on the rovers mast. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Who manages a Mars rover? Throughout the last 7 years that I have operated spacecraft both in orbit and on the surface of Mars, Ive come back again and again to the question of who is most responsible for making a spacecraft go.
Is it the ACE who sends out the commands to the Deep Space Network (DSN) to be sent out to the spacecraft? However they didnt compose the commands. Is it the science Payload Uplink Lead who composed them? However they just composed them out in plain text, which a rover cant check out. Possibly its the Sequence Integration Engineer who transformed them to a binary file the rover could understand? However they do not understand the nuance of how or where to point an instrument or how long to expose the video cameras detector in order to get the crisp images weve become so knowledgeable about, nor can they point an antenna at Mars like a DSN operator requires to. Maybe the rover controls itself with its advanced onboard automation. Or should that credit go to the flight software application developer who wrote the algorithms?
After seven years of considering this question and discussing it with associates, the very best answer I can give is this: All of us are, and none people are.