[X] My Assistant

[elakdawalla]

I just stumbled across this presentation on the Web...some of this stuff I knew about, but not all of it. In retrospect I can't believe how calm Mark always seemed, on the surface, as the rovers were approaching EDL.
Mars Exploration Rovers: The Ugly Truth Behind the Pretty Pictures (PDF format)

--Emily

[RNeuhaus]

To make thing as perfect as possible is a passion. The report will serve a very good base for learned lessons plus ones of the post EDL learned as the good input for the next project such as MSL. Lots of creativity to do things as simple as possible as the key for the success of the mission.

Again thanks Rob for sharing us your experiences.

Rodolfo
P.D. Corrected

[mcaplinger]

The report will serve a very good base for lessons... learned...

I find the candor of these comments very refreshing; there should be more of this. I think the engineering on MSL would be better served if it was more widely acknowledged that a lot of MER involved such close calls. In some quarters there's an awful lot of "we have to do it this way because that's how we did it on MER" and frankly, some of these things (the pyro controller would be a good example) are not worthy of emulation.

The line between success (e.g. MER) and failure (e.g. MPL) is really a lot thinner than many people would claim it is.