Cathy Davis
has been working in the Mars
Exploration Program Outreach Office for the past
year. As the first launches of the program approached, the nation's thirst
for information increased exponentially, and Cathy satisfied that thirst.
She has done an amazing variety of things, from assembling and sending out
information packets, to ordering and shipping spacecraft models, to recruiting
and organizing Mars Speakers, to setting up public displays at fairs. Cathy
represents the face that the Mars Program wants to present to the world
-- competent, cheerful, hard working, and clever.
November 1996:
Tom Rivellini
designed and led the development of the airbags for Mars Pathfinder. This was a unique, innovative, and extremely difficult
challenge to land safely on Mars at a fraction of the cost of the last landing
by Viking in 1976. The airbag team worked both hard and smart to deliver
the airbags, on time, to Pathfinder Spacecraft Integration.
John Callas
is the Experiment Representative for the Mars
Global Surveyor Mars Relay and Thermal Emission Spectrometer
and is a principal in planning and implementing educational and public outreach
activities for MGS and the Mars
Exploration Program Office. Just recently, in
addition to helping prepare graphic material supporting the MGS launch and
national press conferences, he planned and conducted the very successful
Mars Relay Near-Earth Calibration activity, which validated the operation
of the relay system on MGS and involved the participation of the Stanford
University "dish" and amateur radio operators around the world.
John is very active in Mars Exploration Outreach activities with community
and school groups.
Charles Whetsel
is the Mars Global Surveyor Operations Project Engineer with the responsibility
for providing system engineering across all elements of Surveyor flight
operations for Mars Global Surveyor and for the flight operations development
of future Mars Surveyor Missions. During the MGS development, Charles was
a strong teammate with Lockheed Martin Astronautics in the preparation of
test procedures and successful implementation of the spacecraft system test
program. Currently, he is working issues concerned with data quality, flight
operations risk management, the MGS solar array deployment, and science
instrument pointing performance.
Bill Heventhal
provided excellent support to Mars Pathfinder during the pre-launch, launch,
and postlaunch mission periods. The regeneration of the Deep Space Network (DSN)
keyword file for each launch slip was instrumental in the successful "Initial
acquisition" of the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft by the three DSN antennas
at Goldstone, California. Bill is truly one of the key individuals who make
it possible to achieve mission success.
Regina Alleruzzo
made a crucial repair during the final preparations of the Mars Pathfinder
spacecraft for launch. The discovery of a broken wind sensor element on
the Atmospheric Structure Instrument/Meteorology (ASI/MET) mast started
an emergency repair response by the ASI/MET team. "Gina" Alleruzzo,
who built the sensors, was able to maneuver her hands into the restricted
volume around the sensor, remove the broken element, wind a new one, and
solder it into place without disturbing any other parts of the spacecraft.
This repair precluded the loss of an important part of the expected Mars
surface weather data.