[haeikou]

I had the impression that the whole "control" room was nothing but show. Estimating the travelling times of a radio wave, nobody on earth could have had any control about the spacecraft, and none of the engineers in the control room could have done anything other than watch.

So if anybody is more involved into the mission than I am ... is my impression correct, or were there actual fallback mechanisms that these people could have decided upon?

[lusr]

What did you expect them to do? Go home and go to sleep and come back in the morning to check the logs? Come on. They'd hardly close their eyes for a second with all the excitement.

They're all there monitoring the various systems because they're all responsible for various components of an incredibly complex piece of equipment.

Assuming the landing goes well, they all still need to be there to continually monitor the operation of the systems they're responsible for and provide feedback if things don't like how they expected - it's not just about landing there.

This is normal even when releasing a tiny piece of software; it's hardly surprising NASA do the same for a multi-billion dollar project.

[gojomo]

For the landing process, they were watching it unfold automatically and irreversibly on the 14-minute relativistic delay, just like us.

But I don't think that means their assembly there was "just for show". That's the best place to see every detail of how well things matched plans: to see discrepancies, in context and with collaborating peers, as soon as possible.

And now that it's down, there could be info that requires adaptive action. Even though interpreting such new data, devising a plan, and sending instructions would take hours or days, it's still a "control" function, just a slow and deliberate one.

[anusinha]

It was acknowledged that they didn't have any direct control over the landing. However, there's lots of work to be done immediately after and most obviously, it's incredibly exciting to see the data as soon as it is available and to know that years and years of hard work executed successfully.

Additionally, watching a room full of engineers "do their thing" does a lot to get the average layman excited about the research and science and may get schoolkids excited about the possibilities of space travel, STEM, etc.

[mikeknoop]

They committed ("non-reversible changes" on the livestream) to the landing about 20, 30 minutes prior to entry.

[owyn]

Ugh. If you've ever worked on a project with more than 1 person, you'd understand why... it's about the team and the work they'd done over the last few years. Even if they had no direct "joystick" control over the procedure, there was plenty of work happening immediately after the landing. I'm sure most of those people didn't have to actually be there for that work, but anybody working on the project wants to be there...

[mturmon]

EDL is scripted, but there has been activity before tonight, and as another poster said, there is activity after landing. As the cruise phase comes to an end, there have been more and more tweaks to get the landing ellipse as tight as possible. In addition, there are system checkouts, and coordination of the orbiters that relay telemetry, in advance of the landing. It was not at all certain that the images could be produced right away.

[zerohp]

They made it very clear in the press conferences earlier in the day that they have no more control during EDL than the viewer watching it at home.

I don't think the control room was "nothing but show." They certainly could have all gone home, but given the time and energy invested in this mission over the last decade, It was importent to monitor the event as it happened even if it cannot be controlled.

[ars]

I think they were there in case of problems. Plus the post landing checklist, which they are doing now.