Deep Ocean to Deep Space

Landing on Mars! August 6, 2012

The landing of Curiosity on Mars last night brought back memories of projects I have worked on where the was a long delay between action and knowing that it worked. The round trip time for radio signals to Mars is about eight minutes minimum, 42 minutes maximum. So it was flying on its on as an autonomous vehicle and the reports from missing control were well after the fact. I can imagine the tension, and then the relief and excitement.

I remember a moment like that when we were tracking the first manned pass behind the moon. It was my very own downlink voice radio we were listening with at the Collins Radio tacking station. The long wait, everyone looking at each other, waiting for the first signal back as they reappeared, to us, from behind the moon.

And another time when I was working on unmanned autonomous underwater vehicles at the University of New Hampshire. Some missions were long, and many were failures, but the day it came back to us with recorded data proving it had been were we sent it and done what we asked was a moment of great jubilation. And there were only two of us there that day to sing the log.