[ Page 1 ] An out-of-this-world IT job: Mars rover driver

Guiding the rovers from millions of miles away takes skill, patience

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You'd type in the detailed route directions, including right and left turns, then enter the desired speeds and terrain information to reach your office.

Finally, you'd upload the data wirelessly to your car, which would then follow your directions without your having to touch the steering wheel, gas pedal or brake pedal.

If you can imagine all of this, then maybe you can understand what it's like to be one of NASA's Mars rover drivers.


Mars rover drivers Scott Maxwell (far left, back row) and Ashley Stroupe (far right, front row) use 3-D goggles with several colleagues to view images sent back from the rovers earlier this month. They are part of a 14-driver contingent at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
From 100 million miles away, about 14 workers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., take turns daily planning and plotting the routes, work schedules and areas to be explored by the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, as they make their way across the Martian surface.

The NASA engineers don't sit at a console and operate the rovers remotely using a joystick. Because of the vast distance between Earth and Mars, there's a lag time between when the data is sent to the rovers and when it is received. That means that operations in real time, or at the split second a command is given, aren't possible.

Scott Maxwell, 36, one of the original members of the rover driver team, said the time lag is about four minutes each way when the planets are on the same side of the sun, but can lag as much as 20 minutes each way when the sun moves between Mars and Earth as they orbit.