Asbarez writes “Scientists know that our planet Earth has the perfect components for life, but as Earth begins to feel the effects of global warming and human overpopulation, it is only natural that scientists start looking to Space for answers- particularly from our neighbor, Mars.”
August 5, 2012 at 10:31p.m. PDT, the Mars Rover Curiosity successfully descended on parachute and landed upright on Martian soil. Curiosity is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term robotic exploration of the red planet so close to our own home! Curiosity was designed to assess Mars’s habitability, and to see if it ever had the proper environment to support small life-forms called microbes.
According to JPL, Curiosity represents a huge step in Mars surface science and exploration because it demonstrates the ability to land a very large and heavy rover to the surface of Mars, as well as demonstrating the ability to land more precisely in the calculated landing circle. This is a large feat!
Not only am I proud as a scientist, but I’m also proud to know that there were fourteen Armenians who collaborated in this project’s success! Arbi Karapetian, a group supervisor at JPL, joined the project during the design and implementation phase. He was a Test Conductor during Assembly, Testing and launch. When asked how he felt about the project’s success, Arbi said “As an engineer you’re aware of statistical analysis and reliability. Every engineer understands that you do the best you can, but there’s always room for failure. This project was exponentially more complicated than any previous project because of the advances in engineering. The complexity was so high that you could no longer have one engineer, the work had to be spread amongst many engineers, which allowed more room for error. If you love doing what you do, then you’ll never work a day in your life.”
The following Armenians made significant contributions to the success of the MSL (Mars Science laboratory) Project: Avo Demirjian, Vache Vorperian, Alfred Khashaki, Felix Sarkissian and Hrair Aintablian in the field of Electronics; Garen Khanoyan and Richard Ohanian on the Landing Radar System; Serjik Zadourian and Vazrik Kharakhanian in Assembly Test and Launch; Gayaneh Kazarians in Biology; Hanry Hartounian in Flight Software; Armen Toorian in Mechanisms and Testbeds; and Zareh Gorjian in Computer Animation.
