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For rovers to explore the Moon or Mars, they must be able to drive. Rovers on Mars aren’t controlled with joysticks or keyboards. But in the future, astronauts in orbit around Mars or on the surface of the planet could use remote controls to drive rovers. Your game can use keys on the keyboard to make the rover drive.
Background
![Mars Mars Game Mars Mars Game](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125642067/660766285.jpg)
Driving a rover on Mars isn’t easy, especially because drivers have to control rovers all the way from Earth. Depending on where the planets are in their orbits, Mars can be as close to Earth as 54.6 million kilometers or as far as 401 million kilometers. This means the signal from Earth can take as little as 3 minutes to get to Mars or as long as 22 minutes. Mars rovers are not operated by a joystick-like a remote-controlled car. Instead, several times each week, rover drivers on Earth decide what they want a rover to do and computer scientists send commands to the rover by way of NASA’s Deep Space Network. These commands are called sequences and are written in a special sequencing language that was created at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Finding the best driving route for a Mars rover isn't as easy as turning on a navigation app. Scientists must study the region using images of the surface from the rover and orbiters and make decisions about what to investigate next. The terrain might be smooth, but often it is littered with boulders, sandy regions or craters that must be carefully navigated. Scientists decide which locations, features and rocks they’d like the rover to investigate with its robotic arm and onboard instruments. Scientists, engineers and computer scientists work together to decide on the command sequences that will get the job done.
In this board game, students simulate the decision-making and command-sequencing process scientists, engineers and computer scientists engage in to explore Mars.
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