Curiosity discovered a habitable zone, shown in this context mosaic view of the Yellowknife Bay basin taken on Sol 169. The robotic arm
is pressing down on the surface with Mount Sharp in the distance.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
Kim: Exactly.
Q:
How and when did you get to
work for JPL?
Q:
What
were
your
responsibilities as MSL
operations engineer?
Kim: I was focused on the
uplink process, uplink from
Earth to the Rover. Really it
was a tactical planning cycle.
You start off with basically ...
You have a day on the Rover
that you want to have the
Rover do something with.
Most of the scientists will put
forth ideas. They’ll propose a
whole bunch of different stuff.
We basically throw it all
into one plan and hash out
with the scientists what’s
going to fit and what’s not
going to fit. That part of the
process was the part that I
was most heavily involved
in. It’s figuring out how much
we can fit into the Rover in
a day and how much data
can we get down. Is it going
to be enough to plan for the
next sol?
54
54
And at some point after
landing you switched from
mission operations to specifically
working on the Sample Analysis at
Mars (SAM) instrument that analyzes
the soil and rock samples collected
by the drill?
Kim: Yes I switched in January
2013. I’m loving it so far.
Q:
Describe your new position
as the instrument system
engineer for SAM?
Kim: Each of the instruments has
an instrument system engineer
who works for JPL. They are kind
of the technical liaison between
the instrument teams which are
usually not at JPL and the project
management. The prior SAM
instrument engineer had gotten
a fantastic job offer on another
project and they were looking for a
replacement. I got the job.
Photo: Brenden Clark
Kim: Through my graduate work
I was able to realize that mission
operations was what I really wanted
to do. With that in mind, when I
was coming close to graduating I
began putting the word out at JPL.
I got super lucky. They were starting
to look for operations personnel for
MSL at that time. I got hired in
2010 as a mission operations
engineer.
Q:
Space runs in the family: Kim’s father was an astronaut.
Q:
Tell us more about
what’s
involved
in
being the SAM instrument
engineer. Are you the lead
engineer?
Kim: I’m the lead engineer.
Basically I make sure that if
there’s anything that the JPL
project management needs
to communicate to the
SAM team who are at NASA
Goddard I make sure that
that information flows and
gets to the right people. Also
on the other side on the same
team if there’s something that
they need or want from the
JPL project management, I
make sure that they get the
information they need.
I work with both the
SAM team very intimately
and
the
MSL
project
management. That’s on the
telecommunication side. On
the technical side, we have
models of the Rover here on
Earth that we do testing on
for any new flight software or
new things that we want to
try. If there’s anything that’s
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