Quote:
Originally Posted by leon
Wow, that sure is slow, but i suppose exploration dose take time.
Leon
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It takes time for the rover team to gain spatial awareness of where the rover is and the terrain around it. Then it has to plan the martian day (Sol) roving activity send the commands to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and then the orbiter has to transmit the commands to the rover below. The rover in turn has to transmit data back to JPL MSL for the rover team to plan future roving activities. The delay is in the Tx/Rx/Tx
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/missi...rface_nav.html
Maybe as Robotics software evolves future rovers can just go roving on their own.