Do. 1  Do spend some time understanding the point of what you are about to write. 2  Do make lists. 3  Do use an appropriate tone. 4  Do write several drafts of each paragraph. 5  Do compare your first draft copy with other material from previous issues of the journal or website.
Mars is so far away in fact that it takes radio signals quite a long time to get from the spacecraft back to Earth. During Curiosity EDL, this delay will be 13 minutes, 48 seconds, about mid-way between the minimum delay of around 4 minutes and the maximum of around 24 minutes.
So, if an engineer wants to take a picture of a rock on Mars, it'll take about 8 minutes to see the results of that command. But when Mars is at its most distant point, that round trip takes much longer. A signal from Earth takes 20 minutes to reach Mars, and then 20 minutes back. The first person to ever calculate the distance to Mars was the astronomer Giovanni Cassini, famous for his observations of Saturn.