Interview
Q 4:  Can you describe a little about the control room environment? Did you have a lot of backseat drivers?
 
A 4: 
We were concerned about that. I didn't want to have 100 people looking over my shoulder telling me where to drive to. There were literally 150 scientists in an adjacent area who were giving input like that. But we decided to formalize the process. And they would prioritize inputs based on where the Rover had been so far as well as our analysis of the terrain and various imagery. The scientists could determine that they wanted to get to a particular rock as a very high priority, and their ideas would all filter to us in a process, and we would get their inputs all day. Then, as part of the Rover team, I would analyze the terrain and determine if the Rover was healthy, checking whether or not it could get there at all, in one day, or could we just go right over to the rock. And based on that, I would plot the Rover's path, using the system we created, and tell it to go over there.

We had all these images come down from Mars, and we were able to display them, in stereo, and view them on our Onyx2 Infinte Reality, and visualize the terrain and simulate what the Rover would do if it went a certain direction. Then I would essentially be able to do several "what-if" scenarios in real time, with a 3D cursor and analysis of terrain and terrain models that we created. And we could tell if it was safe for the Rover to drive in this fashion and get to the rock, and once we did that, we integrated the motion commands with all the other hundreds of commands we could tell the Rover, including taking pictures, doing health checks, checking on system voltage and temperatures, a lot of mundane stuff, but stuff that was important. And we'd package all that up into a single file with the sequential Rover commands, and that would get sent through the network, essentially going through this 70-meter-large dish, one of three of which are equally spaced around Earth. And the commands were sent through space on an electrical signal, and finally reached Mars. The Lander would pick them up and relay them to the Rover via radio modem, and when it was time for the Rover to wake up it would ask, "What do you have for me today?" and it would just start doing all it was supposed to do for the whole day.

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