It struck me that I have no idea how curiosity is instructed to move
I suspect someone can't be sitting in front of a computer with a joystick, moving a foot, waiting for curiosity to move a foot, then move another foot...
My next thought is nasa creates a route based on the map and then provides route data to curiosity. But there's no GPS (again, I assume). So is it all dead-reckoning? NASA somehow calculates 'move 100 ft forward, turn left 80 degrees, move 10 ft forward", etc?
That would be a long time between joystick commands, seeing as Mars varies from four to twenty four minutes away at the speed of light. Double that for round-trip (video to Earth, command to Mars).
It struck me that I have no idea how curiosity is instructed to move
I suspect someone can't be sitting in front of a computer with a joystick, moving a foot, waiting for curiosity to move a foot, then move another foot...
My next thought is nasa creates a route based on the map and then provides route data to curiosity. But there's no GPS (again, I assume). So is it all dead-reckoning? NASA somehow calculates 'move 100 ft forward, turn left 80 degrees, move 10 ft forward", etc?
(I am also assuming NASA uses metric)
OR does curiosity make its own decisions somehow?
I gotta go google some stuff now