The MSL Marathon: Ensuring Uninterrupted Rover Activities in a Dynamic Institutional Environment

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) operations relies on a consistent and stable infrastructure to make the most of each martian day (sol). A standard MSL operations shift consists of assessing the most recent data received from the rover, planning rover activities for the next one to three sols based on that data, building commands to accomplish those activities, and delivering the commands for radiation to the rover. The time between receiving data and the deadline to deliver the commands can be as short as 8.5 hours. Any disruption during an operations shift risks the commands not being radiated to the rover within the uplink window. This would cause the rover to execute its onboard “runout” sequence, performing a limited set of activities while awaiting new commands instead of collecting valuable scientific data. Each time an infrastructure change is made on the MSL project, the team must take careful steps to ensure a smooth transition to make the most of the time exploring Mars. Throughout the first eight years of the MSL surface mission, the Curiosity rover was primarily operated from the Building 264 flight operations facility at JPL. The first major infrastructure transition occurred in response to the COVID-19 work-from-home orders in March 2020. The team quickly reworked MSL operations as we knew it, having all roles supporting shifts entirely remote from home. After about 2 years of operating in this new normal, onsite work became available again and the project aimed to create a hybrid environment, allowing team members to freely work either remote or onsite. Shortly after, MSL operations moved buildings to collocate with the Mars 2020 rover project and make space available for upcoming Europa Clipper operations. A few months after the move was complete, MSL's primary teleconferencing platform, which enables external science team members from all over the world to participate in tactical meetings and the JPL operations team to support shifts remotely, was migrated from Cisco Webex to Microsoft Teams. On top of institutional changes, Cyber vulnerabilities are an increasing threat that require continuous ground tool updates to respond to those vulnerabilities. This paper describes the various infrastructure changes MSL has undergone since returning from fully remote work and the associated challenges that were overcome to ensure rover operations continued without any interruptions.