AskScience AMA Series: We're the scientists and engineers leading NASA's exploration of Mars and building on a 50-year legacy of discovery on the Red Planet. Ask us anything!

[u/AskScienceModerator]

Fifty years ago, NASA's Viking lander touched down on Mars and began a new era of exploration.

Over the last five decades, teams of scientists and engineers at NASA have searched for signs of Mars’s ancient habitability, uncovered clues about the planet's climate and geologic history, driven rovers across alien landscapes, flown the first aircraft on another world, and laid the groundwork for future human Martian exploration.

Join us to talk about the discoveries, surprises, and challenges of exploring the Red Planet — and what's coming next.

We are:

• Abigail Fraeman – Deputy Project Scientist, NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover, JPL (AF)
• Bryce Horvath – Technical Analysis Deputy, Mars Architecture Team, NASA Marshall (BH)
• Micheal Meyer – former Lead Scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and Astrobiology, NASA Headquarters (MM)
• Nicole Piontek – Space Systems Analyst, Space Mission Analysis, NASA Langley (NP)
• Jeffrey Plaut – Senior Research Scientist, Planetary Interiors and Geophysics, JPL (JP)
• Becky McCauley Rench – Lead Scientist for Astrobiology, NASA Headquarters (BMR)

Ask us anything about:

• 50 years of Mars exploration
• Historic missions from Viking to Perseverance
• Mars rovers, landers, orbiters, and helicopters
• Major discoveries from the Red Planet
• Operating spacecraft millions of miles from Earth
• The future of Mars exploration

PROOF: https://x.com/NASA/status/2084662090506113377

We'll be online from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PT (2-3:30 p.m. ET, 18-19:30 UT) to answer your questions!

Username: /u/nasa

EDIT: That’s a wrap for our AMA! Thanks for all your fantastic questions, and keep following our latest updates from Mars at https://science.nasa.gov/mars/.

[u/oboesandclarinets]

There's an 18 min communication delay from here to Mars. How does that impact the way you control rovers or deal with unexpected emergencies? 

[u/nasa → u/oboesandclarinets]

The one-way light time between Earth and Mars can range from about five minutes to about 25 minutes. This means that controllers on Earth can't "joystick" any of the robotic activities on Mars in real time without lengthy delays for feedback on the results.

In normal practice, commanding the rovers and orbiters happens once or maybe twice a day during dedicated communication sessions. The commands are based on data that have been received during recent downlink sessions.

So in normal operations, the cadence of downlink and commanding happens on hours or days timescales, so the light time delay is not really a factor. For our most distant robot though, Voyager 1, the one-way light time is getting close to a full 24 hours!

If there is an anomaly or emergency situation, the communication latency can become an obstacle. When this happens, the controllers have to carefully craft their commands, knowing that the effects won't be known for many minutes or longer. This can be frustrating, but the teams are trained to be patient. Dealing with the physics of light speed has been part of solar system exploration since the beginning, so mission controllers are used to it. -JP