Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Dare Mighty Things: NASA’s Rock Stars Go Beyond Mars

Adam Steltzner is a NASA engineer who works for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). View his riveting presentation on the success of the Curiosity rover mission. Adam describes how the sky crane his team designed at JPL performed an elaborate, impossible-seeming sequence to lower the huge Mars rover Curiosity to the planet's surface from a hovering rocket guided totally by artificial intelligence. Humans wouldn't know if it worked until it was all over. Hence the terror. The actual Mars landing took place on August 6th, 2012.


Adam Steltzner: Beyond Mars, Earth from The Long Now Foundation on FORA.tv