Abstract
Operating a lander is quite different from operating an orbiter or flyby craft. Navigators steer orbiters’ paths long in advance, so scientists can plan observations months ahead. Rovers don’t have the luxury of predictability. Each day’s activities can’t be planned until controllers back on Earth have received data that tell them the condition and state of the spacecraft, and the lay of the landscape surrounding it. A team can do strategic planning – make a list of top-level science goals – in advance, but to accomplish the strategic plan, the team has to develop a new tactical plan each Martian sol. To make things more complicated, Martian sols are not quite the same length as Earth days.
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- 1.
Bass et al (2005)
- 2.
Reichardt (2015)
- 3.
Allison (1997)
- 4.
Allison (1997)
- 5.
Local Mean Solar Time is defined for a fixed longitude on the surface. For Curiosity, that longitude was defined before landing to be 137.42°E. Curiosity’s mission time does not shift with Curiosity’s changing longitude. For every 246 meters that Curiosity drives west of the initial landing position, the Sun rises 1 second later than it does at the longitude of the landing site. Curiosity actually landed at 137.441635°E, which meant that there was about a 4-second difference between Curiosity mission time and the Local Mean Solar Time – not enough of a difference to make it worth it to adjust the software, especially because this tiny difference is swamped by the variations in sun rise/set times caused by the difference between True and Mean Solar Time.
- 6.
Chattopadhyay et al (2014)
- 7.
This section is based upon my years of reporting for planetary.org on the ongoing adventures of the Curiosity mission. That reporting is based upon mission images, press releases and team blog entries on the JPL and United States Geologic Survey websites, roughly monthly interviews of Ashwin Vasavada, and occasional conversations with numerous other team members
- 8.
CHIMRA is pronounced “chimera”
- 9.
JPL (2013)
- 10.
Interview of Rich Rainen and James Erickson conducted September 18, 2014
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Lakdawalla, E. (2018). Mars Operations. In: The Design and Engineering of Curiosity. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68146-7_3
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