Next stop Mars, please; two top EEs discuss the trials and tribulations of building and launching a ship to Mars. (electronics engineers) (includes related articles on Mars Observers' scientific instruments and the possibility of putting men on Mars) (Products & Careers Edition) (Cover Story)

EDN, February, 1993 by Schechter, Joanne

Two top EEs discuss the trials and tribulations of building and launching a ship to Mars

"My name is on its way to Mars," says Roger Gibbs, Mars Observer spacecraft systems engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA). "It's a practice here that people will take signatures and photo-etch them onto a metal plate that's somewhere on the spacecraft. That's an intangible benefit, but it's exciting," explains Gibbs.

His name is not alone. Gibbs is one of hundreds of engineers and scientists in the US and abroad who contributed to NASA's Mars Observer program, the most ambitious data-gathering expedition yet to the Red Planet. The unmanned...

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