Mars Mission, Directed from Home

     In the photo below, he looks like he's playing a very advanced video game, and in a sense he is....he works for NASA and is one of the people remotely driving the Curiosity Rover on Mars!

     As with many other operations, many of the NASA workers are doing their job from home...and there are complications too:

From the JPL Lab news release:

"Now they do the same job by holding several video conferences at once while also relying more on messaging apps. It takes extra effort to make sure everybody understands one another; on average, each day's planning takes one or two more hours than it normally would. That adds some limits to how many commands are sent each day. But for the most part, Curiosity is as scientifically productive as ever.
To make sure everyone is being heard and understands one another, science operations team chief Carrie Bridge proactively talks to the scientists and engineers to close any communication gaps: Does anyone see issues with the current plan? Does the solution the engineers are converging around work for the scientists?
"I probably monitor about 15 chat channels at all times," she said. "You're juggling more than you normally would."