Controlling an excavator from thousands of miles away - GIF

[Frank S]

Why control from orbit if you could do it from Earth instead? I wonder if the lag time would be noticeable?

You would need to be in orbit preferably geosynchronous with which ever planet moon or asteroid you were mining to remain in constant contact. and to minimalize lag time.
So while a 1.3 second delay one way direct communications may not be devastating between the Earth and the moon, plus there is a network of satellites the signal could be relayed from a ground based console to a machine working on the surface each time a signal is relayed from one transmitter to the next receiver then transmitted again the couple of nano seconds this takes is accumulative. the signal would have to be sent on a dedicated secure band width modulation or this signal could become jumbled or hacked. Think of some 10 or 11 year old who stumbled upon the signal and thought they were playing a videogame
mining an asteroid would definitely require being in orbit as would work on Mars due to the over 4 minute delay.
But I can see several applications for such a rig in many places here on Earth the machine could be operating in a hazardous environment while the operator was a safe distance away, think of an accident at a nuclear power plant