How real is this?
One command sequence per day:
The Deep Space Network that is used to communicate
with all spacecraft is very busy. NASA scientists
only had one window per day to talk to Sojourner.
Command sequences, not steering:
Because radio signals take at least 20 minutes to
reach Mars, you could never steer the rover in real
time. Rover scientists and engineers spend each
day studying photos from the previous days to plan
the days operations, then upload a sequence of commands.
Only a week to drive: the Sojourner rover’s
nominal planned mission lifetime was about a week. It actually
continued to operate for 12 weeks. Newer rovers are planned to
operate for longer times.
The real thing: images from the actual software used by JPL to
control the MER rovers.
