NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

I’ll let you know as soon as I’m ready.

No problem! A very smart and kind user on Mastodon has just provided me with a link to the M20 traverse JSON. So I can now do away with several steps to get the start / stop times for each drive without having to extract the drive start / end times from the geojson from the map. Importing the start / end time is still manual, but it only takes a short time. From that data I can calculate drive time, speed (it's not quick a speedster :) ) but it may be of interest to some, I can also calculate the longest /shortest drive times, average drive times etc etc. Not sure yet what to use.

I'm hoping the 'Calc' team eventually creates an IMPORT JSON function, like the one that EXCEL has had for many years, once they do that, I can create a spreadsheet that automatically imports the data from several different JSONs after each drive and automatically populates the tables I share when the spreadsheet is opened. Until then, there will be some manual copy, convert and paste to do, but it literally takes an extra minute or two after the JSONs are published, and you're used to operating it.

Importing data manually is actually good practice, as you can see where the data comes from, and it's easier to fix in the event that JPL ever change the format of the JSONs. They did change the M20 JSON a couple of times (they added extra data fields) but the last time it was changed was a couple of years ago, the JSONs have been stable for quite some time. I didn't even notice they had changed it last time, as with the IMPORT JSON function I was using in my spreadsheet, I had specified which header fields I wanted to import, that option basically ignored the rest of the fields, only importing the fields that I needed at that time. So I did not notice the addition of the new fields, nor did their addition break my spreadsheet (a nice bonus being able to specify which fields you need, rather than importing all of them).

When you're ready for the spreadsheet, can let me know the browser you are using, and the spreadsheet package you intend to use, so I can tailor a set of instructions you can use to gather the data (JSON URLs etc) then copy, convert and drop it into the spreadsheet etc. When you open / load a JSON URL in different browsers, they can display the data with subtle variations, the LibreWolf Browser I'm using now is a little easier to use with JSONs :)