ELMA, N.Y. — Millions of people all over the world watched Thursday as NASA made history by landing the Perseverance Rover on the surface of Mars. Countless scientists and engineers worked for years to make this mission possible, and that includes hundreds of workers here in Western New York.
Moog, Inc. which has its headquarters in Elma, had a large part in the early success of the mission. Engineers and workers at Moog helped build the rocket boosters that steered Perseverance through space and helped it land safely on the red planet. Now, the company's technology will keep the drill clean as it collects Martian soil samples to analyze.
Of course, these missions aren't without their occasional hiccups. After the landing, NASA's Mission Control jokingly called the landing process "seven minutes of terror" as they feared a crash, and Moog engineers were nervous too. "We were definitely a part of that seven minutes. I was sitting here watching myself. I can't imagine how the folks over at JPL - were much closer to it felt," says Steve McDonald a Propulsion Engineer Manager at Moog. "But I was feeling nervous myself just kind of anxiously waiting to see what happened. But yeah, our throttle valves helped lower the rover right to the surface just as they did back in Mars MSL for the Curiosity Rover several years ago."
The Perseverance Rover is NASA's fifth rover to be sent to Mars, following the most recent Curiosity rover which landed on the planet in 2012. Perseverance is approximately the size of an SUV and weighs two tons.
While they're used to seeing their work take flight to outer space, Moog employees back here in Western New York say watching this one was especially rewarding. "Those NASA exploration missions, they have a lot of high visibility, they generate a lot of buzz, there's a lot of interest and it really gets people excited," says McDonald. "It's nice because when you're working in the space industry and you're working on so much hardware like we do, you tend to take it for granted and it's events like these that really help remind us how special it really is."
In a statement on the company's website, Steve Witkowski, Market Manager for Space Electronics said “From the machinists building the individual hardware to our technicians integrating each component into the larger system, this is truly a mission inside a mission. It’s incredible to think of your work being a critical component in exploring another planet.”
The scientists and engineers at Moog tell 2 On Your Side that they hope to be involved with a manned mission to Mars in the future.