NASA’s Curiosity Team Operates A Mars Rover From Home
“For people who are able to work remotely during this time of social distancing, video conferences and emails have helped bridge the gap. The same holds true for the team behind NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. They’re dealing with the same challenges of so many remote workers – quieting the dog, sharing space with partners and family, remembering to step away from the desk from time to time – but with a twist: They’re operating on Mars.”
In Response to COVID-19, Space Dynamics Lab Satellite Operators “Fly” Small Sats from Home, Space Dynamics Laboratory
“The Space Dynamics Laboratory announced today that satellite operators are flying NASA spacecraft from their homes to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. The emphasis on social distancing and stay-at-home work has become ubiquitous throughout the world and has affected sectors of many industries, including the space industry. In response to disruptions of normal work methods due to the global pandemic, SDL satellite operators have successfully shifted operations of two NASA small satellites away from traditional Mission Operations Centers to alternative flight centers–their living rooms.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

10 replies on “NASA Now Controls Spacecraft From Living Rooms”

    1. My first attempt to actually work from home, if I remember right, was on an X-terminal connected to a 9600 baud or 14.4 kbit/s modem (had to have been in the very early 90s). It did not go swimmingly.

      Today, I’m logged into work over a 200 Mbps cable modem connection. It’s quite functional today.

      1. I started teaching online in the 1990’s using similar technology. It is amazing how fast the technology developed. Hopefully in a few years we will have the technology of “Ready Player One”.?

  2. As secure as NASA’s IT department makes it.

    When I log into work from home, even on a personal machine I need to use a Smart Card, provided by work, in a reader to get it to work. In conjunction with the card, there is a separate code I have to enter to authenticate that card. This is all on top of my normal username and password that I use to log into a work machine.

    1. Which says nothing about the data path. That is the concern. Is there end-to-end strong encryption? Some VPNs aren’t secure in intermediate steps – the data aren’t encrypted on their servers. Sometimes they disclose this in the fine print – they do packet inspection to generate data to sell for ad targeting. At least one VPN out there is hosted in China.

      1. JPL doesn’t host their VPN in China <grin>
        It’s hosted at JPL, and has vastly increased capacity in the last few weeks.

    2. Those are good protections against logon attempts by those without valid credentials, but the security has to be end-to-end, and thus is only as good as the weakest link, which may be the VPN solution (hardware and/or software) or routers (ditto). In the past, command and monitoring services with which I was familiar were only available inside a restricted subset of the NASA network space as an additional protection, and the use of a VPN to allow this is basically spoofing that protection.

      But certainly, if ever there was a time when this was necessary, it’s now. Still, I’d feel a lot better if no one had publicized it.

      1. It’s been a while since I did anything involving the JPL flight operations network (eight or nine years), so this is probably dated information. But they only allow network connections to the operations network from other machines physically located at JPL or those with dedicated lines. They did, however, allow VPN connections to a machine at JPL and off the operations network, and then a remote login from that machine to one inside the operations network. One or both (I can’t remember) did require dual authentication.

        But, despite the press release, it isn’t clear to me that 100% of the people involved are working from home. Deciding what commands to issue, and writing a command sequence doesn’t require being on the operations network. Running it through the checking and validation software and then sending up to a rover on Mars does require being on that network. You could probably do that with 95% of the people involved at home and off the operations network, and 5% doing the things which require on-site presence for security reasons.

  4. Not really, if I understand what you mean. That would be more like the parent walking off, the kid playing with the keyboard and putting a typo in the command sequence, and the parent or someone else checking it, finding it and fixing the typo. That’s not a real operational problem. And the kid would get a serious lecture (thirty years ago, it would have been a hard spanking, but we live in a kinder world today.)

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