NASA engineer discusses Mars rover missions

The lights are dim, and a soothing voice directs the audience through Mars' surface.

Opportunity, aka little miss perfect, and Spirit, not so perfect, are the two land rovers traversing out of craters and up mountains in search of evidence of water.

A motherly attachment to the two rovers was hard to miss throughout Nagin Cox's lecture on Mars exploration missions Friday at the Nebraska Union.

Cox, an engineer with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, led a group of about 70 University of Nebraska-Lincoln students, faculty and staff on a journey from the building of the two rovers to their hectic Mars landings and missions in 2004.

Building on the early missions to Mars — Viking in 1975 and Pathfinder in 1996-97 — both rovers were able to find minerals providing evidence of water on opposite sides of Mars, Cox said.

Robotic geologist rovers will give way to robotic chemists for the next rover mission to Mars scheduled to launch in 2011.

"Now we're trying to find out if there's an environment for life," Cox said. "We want to take soil sample analysis on Mars."

The rovers' descent and landings on Mars were some of the most emotionally charged moments of the mission, Cox said.

After Spirit safely landed on Mars, the NASA crew lost its signal or communications contact with it for 17 minutes, at which point Cox said she thought the mission had failed.

"Then we got a signal," Cox said. "Everyone was screaming; it felt like we were seeing Mars through the rover we had built."

Then there were the constant trips to the bakery and late-night runs to McDonald's.

"Going every day to the bakery, I had to quit because we had so many failed missions (during the building of the rovers)," she said.

Her humor and stories of highs and lows throughout her involvement in the mission are what some students enjoyed the most.

"It was interesting. To have somebody who was actually there to give a first-hand account makes a difference," said Christopher Lohmeier, a senior electrical engineering major.

Laura Weber, a junior chemical engineering major, agreed.

"She put the mission in perspective, how a lot of blood, sweat and tears goes into it," she said.

kevinzelaya@dailynebraskan.com