[djsumdog]

Considering the lag in communication to earth, it'd have to be fully autonomous. It needs to be able to avoid obstacles, navigate visually (that article states a compass won't work with Mars's magnetic field) and find a place to land, in direct sunlight, whenever it needs to charge its batteries.

I'm sure NASA has mapped out some waypoints, but there's no way to really control the actual flight remotely without a human in orbit.

[jessriedel]

Yea, the daily flight time (3 min) is much less than signal travel time to Earth. So the entire flight needs to be autonomous.