They give it high-level commands like "run this flight pattern at 11am", but there's no human controlling a joystick. It takes radio waves 3-20 minutes (depend

They give it high-level commands like "run this flight pattern at 11am", but there's no human controlling a joystick. It takes radio waves 3-20 minutes (depending on orbit position) to travel from earth to mars (and vice versa), so direct control would be impossible.