The NASA team responsible for the rover Curiosity located on the planet Mars, controls it from home, due to the coronavirus.
First, it is quite difficult to drive an astronomically expensive rover, on a still unknown planet, from millions of miles away. Especially when you do this from home. But NASA's Curiosity team is proving to be able to do that.
Η NASA released today how her team has adapted to the pandemic and manages to manage a significant, ongoing Mission, involving hundreds of people, but without any of these people meeting in person.
The head of the group, Ms. Alicia Olbauth, says: "Usually we are all in one room and share screens, images and data. It is not only the separate rooms, but also the different programs and the settings computers. I monitor about 15 chat channels at any given time.
Of course, there are also videoscalls, sometimes several at once. Processes that used to be done on high-performance workstations are now done on laptops and web services. But while the added complexity makes the design process less efficient, the results continue."
By mid-March, the Jet Propulsion Lab's offices in Pasadena, California had been completely vacated and work suspended. But Curiosity is still working. According to NASA, he recently went to a rock, took a sample and sent a confirmation back to the team, as it would if everything was working properly.