Mars rovers give scientists a ground-level view of the red planet – peek inside their NASA control room

Lights blink on as I enter the Rover Operations Center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, at 7:30 a.m. I'm the first to arrive, even though I already feel late. Sometime during the night on Earth, the Curiosity rover finished its day exploring on Mars and beamed its latest collection of images and measurements to a Mars orbiter zooming by overhead. The orbiter relayed the data to Earth, where it now waits on servers here and at partner institutions around the globe. Once our rover operations shift kicks off at 8:15 a.m., a few dozen engineers and scientists will have just three hours to check the health of the rover, analyze the new science data and agree on the next set of rover activities.