ATA Engineering’s involvement in Curiosity program featured in San Diego Union Tribune
SAN DIEGO, Calif., Oct. 22, 2012 – ATA’s work on the development and analysis of the Mars rover Curiosity has been featured in the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper.
Over the five years leading up to the late-2011 launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, ATA engineers worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to ensure that the car-sized rover, with its complement of advanced cameras, sensors, and tools, would be able to withstand the landing and the harsh conditions involved in its two-year mission of exploring the Martian surface.
As the Union Tribune notes, ATA’s contributions to the groundbreaking project spanned from the top of the rover to the bottom—from analyses of the robotic arm to make sure that the jarring work of the drill would not damage the arm’s other delicate equipment, to performing thousands of computer simulations of the landing phase to see how well the rover’s six wheels could handle a possible rough or uneven landing site.
This support helped to ensure the success of the rover, which recently began making its way up the side of the crater in which it landed, in its mission to help NASA scientists find answers about the planet’s past. Click here to read the full Union Tribune article.
