It has bothered me that teleoperation has been discounted for Mars exploration because of the time lag. The time lag means only that we can't teleoperate from earth, but teleoperation from Mars orbit is not only possible, but probably an extremely effective way to leverage humans for Mars exploration. A single human in mars orbit could teleoperate multiple exploration vehicles all over the Mars surface. He could also oversee semi-automated construction of facilities on the surface or in orbit.

Utilizing this concept could speed Mars exploration by decades. I would liken it to our first stages of semi-automated deep sea exploration. If we don't have to worry about landing humans on Mars (initially) and their recovery from the surface, the required mass transfers are lowered dramatically. For the same cost we could probably increase exploration by an order of magnitude.

If we work on artificial gravity (tethered rotation) of the space capsule, we could avoid low gravity health issues for the astronauts. The only other worry would be space radiation and we should be able to track space weather with our new sun watching satellites, and provide a safe room in the spacecraft. A few high orbit communication and tracking mars satellites could provide high bandwidth telemetry and GPS for the robotic control of the surface vehicles.

Anyway, I don't seem to ever see this possibility mentioned, it always seems to be either a full human landing or full robotic landing, never the concept of teleoperation from orbit. Does anyone else know if this is being worked on at all?