Tanya Harrison is a planetary scientist and a photographer. My class and I had the honor of skyping with her and asking her questions about mars, space, photography etc.

here is a link to her website: http://tanyaofmars.com/

Our Skype chat was only on air for about 3 minutes due to some audio difficulties.

Question: How do the rovers move?

Answer: the rovers are controlled by people who send them commands from computers. Since Mars is very far away from us, there is always about a 40 minute delay between the commands and the rovers actions. The delay would vary in time depending on how far away Mars is from Earth. the rover moves at about 0.14km/h. Workers’ call time depends on what time it is on Mars. Since Mars time is only 12 hours in one day, workers might have to be at work in the middle of the night so that they can control the rovers on time.

Aside from learning how rovers function, we were also one of the first people to find out that they found solid evidence of water being on Mars. Check it out in the brief 3 minutes our Skype chat was on air: