Meet the Drivers Behind NASA's Mars Rovers 67
StonyandCher writes "Scott Maxwell must have one of the best IT jobs in the solar system, driving NASA's Mars Rovers. Behind every robot is a driver. He's one of 14 Rover Drivers that work in NASA's California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Maxwell discusses what makes up an average work day, the highlights of the project, how he got the job, and the tools he uses in his work. A great look at the team of dedicated IT workers behind the robots, plotting the every move of NASA's twin robot geologists, Spirit and Opportunity, since they first landed on Mars at the start of 2004."
Women Drivers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
On a separate note, for several months they've been driving one of the rovers in reverse, with the left blinker on.
Re: (Score:1)
And us guys crash watching them put on lip-gloss.
Re:Women Drivers? (Score:4, Informative)
Three: Ashley Stroupe [nasa.gov], Tara Estlin [nasa.gov], and Julie Townsend [nasa.gov].
Incidentally, they're all terrific speakers as well; if you get a chance to go to one of their talks, don't miss it.
Also, an unofficial trainee for the MER rover-driver role is Sharon Laubach [nasa.gov], who also worked on the first-ever Mars rover, Sojourner [nasa.gov] (the Mars Pathfinder rover). Sharon's doing this unofficially because officially she's our boss, but she's awesome at it and loves doing it, so we give her a turn now and then.
Ahem. Ask them in person sometime, and see what happens.
Luckily for you, they all have good senses of humor, so you're reasonably likely to escape with your life. Bear in mind that Julie does karate, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds to me like someone is cruising for a (neo-)Darwin award.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:IT? (Score:5, Informative)
Since when is Aerospace Engineer or Scientist an IT job?
Scott is an IT guy.
I think that being the author of "Linux Core Kernel Commentary" [amazon.com] , "the most in-depth guide to the core code of the linux kernel", which was review here on slashdot [slashdot.org], gives him a smidge of tech credibility.
And you, mister Anonymous Coward, do you have any similar publications?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
As you can see, he is the most prolific of all slashdot users.
Oh (Score:4, Funny)
In soviet russia... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
No tailgating (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
75 mph * 2 seconds = 110 f/s * 2s = 220 feet
Methinks you might have trouble staying almost a full football field behind anyone. The rule I heard was 1 car length for each 10 mph you are traveling, but even that seems like a bit much at higher speeds, especially in congested areas.
Back on topic, I sure wish my car had the same amount of automation as the Mars Rovers. I could just type in "work" to the GPS, the autopilot takes over, and I nap on the
Re: (Score:1)
Did you read the article? If you had you would have known there's no automation at all; you must have been thinking of the TV show a year or two ago that showed a car that was supposed to be as intelligent as the Mars Rovers escape and started doing it's own thing.
After only one meeting with the Rover drivers, I still couldn'
Re: (Score:2)
does he have triple A? (Score:2)
which gps unit works best on mars?
how does he change the windshield fluid?
ok, i'll shut up now...
Good job, Scott & Company (Score:4, Insightful)
> will do the right thing in the face of all imaginable
> contingencies. We review this final cut at the day's
> commands -- twice!
They're obviously getting this done damn well, to keep these machines going so long after their expiration date. These JPL folks do NASA and humanity a great credit.
Kudos.
Re: (Score:2)
On behalf of my team: thanks! And they really are the smartest, most dedicated, all-around finest group of folks I have ever had the pleasure to work with. The whole project is like that; it's the experience of a lifetime, and I'm loving every minute of it.
I ponder (Score:1)
P.S. Sorry for turning him into a drunken 20 year old in that quote.
Bent brush (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I find a bigger puzzle in the article: "In late 2006, Opportunity's rock grinder, or rock abrasion tool (RAT), stalled during a grind because an encoder had stopped working. Engineers fixed the problem by writing software to operate the tool without data from the encoder. "So we [have been] able to grind successfully with the device since then," Callas says...Spirit's grinder encoder also stopped working recently, forcing the rover team to implement a similar software fix."
Spirit's rock
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Eureka! (Score:2, Funny)
Are they gonna patent their Trench-A-Matic?
What?!? No .Net ?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Pan-Galactic Traffic Citation (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Motorist:
You have received this traffic citation, on this sol of 13 Smoogna, 1126, issued by the city of Oxia Palus in the county of Planitia, Mars, for the following indicated violations.
__ Following too closely to a boulder.
__ Failure to light headlamps within 5 sols of sundown.
__ Parallel parking on inside slope of crater.
__ Driving in planet-wide reduced visibility conditions without running lights.
__ Failure to signal turn to JPL.
You will find information on the back of this form concerning fees and places to pay your fine. Thank you, and remember: "Unsafe driving will make your fellow Martian motorists see red."
Should have just used LOGO to drive them... (Score:5, Funny)
Where are the specs? (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe your drivers are ok, but until specs are released, I'm not buying any NASA Mars rovers. The Taiwanese rovers are good enough, and Theo's team have come up with drivers for them, that we can trust.
How they were trained : Racing Destruction Set (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_Destruction_Set [wikipedia.org]
uh oh (Score:2)
Must have the derisive snort down pat (Score:1)
Why 14? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why 14? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, about a third of the people included in that count don't actually work on MER any more, though they're sometimes called in to consult on tricky days or for anomaly investigations.
This guy is not IT, don't insult him like that. (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy is not IT, don't insult him like that. This was an systems engineering job, taking many different disciplines like mechanical design, controls, computer programming, networking, electrical engineering, and computations/algorithms and rolling it into one. Now, he seems like more of an operations engineer, as he is running what is essentially operations, support, and maintenance for the rover. NOT IT.
Don't kid yourselves, IT is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to tech jobs. The vast majority of IT workers debug problems with Windows security profiles, or check that a port is open on a firewall, or make sure that some top level manager can view his porn through the corporate Web filters. Higher level IT jobs involve putting in a network switch, or maybe making a web site to streamline a business process. Half the network engineers I meet don't know what negative voltage is, and most of the programmers look at assembler and see gibberish. Trained monkeys could do the job if they didn't throw $hit everywhere.
This guy is not a code monkey, he is not a TCP/IP whore, he's an engineer and a scientist. He works on systems that would make an IT guy say, "I only know how to configure Cisco, I don't know how to do that". Or maybe "You can make code turn wheels at a certain speed? WOW!".
Best learn it now, IT (non-management of course) in 5 years is going to be one step above assembly line worker, designated paper pusher, and secretary.
~Sticky
/Go ahead, mod it down. It doesn't make it any less true.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost as cool, but far better at parties... (Score:5, Funny)
I shouldn't have tried to outdo him by bragging to the hostess that I was the only real "rocket scientist" present. (I build target missiles that get shot down by the MDA.)
A short while later, John used his cellphone to impress a young lady who wandered over to chat him up. He opened up his Razr and showed her how he gets 12-hour updates from each of the rovers via SMS, complete with maps.
The dude gets texted from Mars four times a day.
I had to concede.
Re: (Score:1)
Now, what makes me think... (Score:1)
Those Mars rover drivers like to play tricks on each other, trying to sneak in some instructions in the other guys' files, to make the rover crash into rocks or dive over an outcrop. It's gotten so bad that they hold peer reviews and trial runs before the data is sent to the robots.
Ah, but it's a tough job, too. On one hand you are happy to have work, on the other, you hate those little rovers and wish they'd give up and die already. Wh
The drivers are Dutch (Score:1)
Wet dream... (Score:1)
All in all it is absolutely great these women are so successful in these areas of science that has for a long time been seen as an old boys club. Kudos to them and let's hope they'll have more prospero