The 3D Video Game That Helps NASA Operate The Curiosity Mars Rover From 225 Million Kilometers Away
The distance between Earth and Mars, and by extension the Earth and the NASA Curiosity Mars Rover, can sway heavily between a maximum of 401 million kilometers and 54.6 million kilometers at the minimum.
The average distance between the two planets is somewhere around 225 million km (~140 million miles).
So, operating and driving Curiosity from such a huge distance is quite obviously no walk in the park.
But NASA, as this TechInsider report points out, deploys a relatively simple and potentially fun method to go about that seemingly herculean task - a software that can be best described as a 3D video game.
Please note, the use of the phrase "relatively simple and possibly fun" doesn't discount the fact that this "3D video game" is actually a state-of-the-art software that epitomizes NASA's ability to competently simplify even the toughest of riddles in the domain of space science and engineering.
How does it work?
The technical nitty-gritty is admittedly quite complicated and is almost certainly beyond the ambit of an amateur explanatory article.
But simply put, when NASA wants to control the Curiosity Mars rover, it boots up the video game that encompasses three distinct components including a high-tech software, 3D glasses and virtual reality.
The researchers can use the software to do a "virtual walk" on the surface of the red planet through virtual reality images.
They mark all the waypoints on their path, make detailed maps and then upload them to the rover's onboard system.
Once done, the NASA Curiosity Mars rover drives, clicks images, collects surface samples and does a whole range of other things that basically reproduces the virtual movements of the driver (who, by the way, is sitting at a distance of more than 75,300,000 kilometers away at this moment)
Worth noting, even at their closest distance, it takes light (and hence all electromagnetic signals) from earth more than 3 minutes to reach Mars.
So, the whole process of sending a signal to the rover and subsequently receiving a response takes more than 6 minutes.
That duration elongates even further, up to 44.5 minutes, as the two planets drift apart from one another.
The signals to the NASA Curiosity Rover are sent and received using Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Deep Space Network, a rather extensive network of antennas stationed in multiple cities across the world including California, Canberra and Madrid.
The idea of placing these antennas all over the world is to make sure that the researchers can communicate with the rover without having to bother about the Earth's rotation.
Here's a screenshot of the software's interface.
