NASA/Simeon Schmaus
Mimi Aoun could barely contain her excitement as she drove up Oak Grove Drive, the leafy thoroughfare that leads to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Aung spent his formative years in Burma and Malaysia, which had no space programs. A career in aerospace seemed out of reach for her. But here she was, 22 years old, having a job interview with a potential job at the Deep Space Network. Aoun dreamed of helping NASA intercept and amplify the weak signals sent back to Earth from humanity’s farthest spacecraft, including Voyager.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Aoun said.
On that day in 1990, the math-loving engineer met with his future manager and toured his lab’s facilities. I felt at home right away. A naturally energetic and enthusiastic person, Aoun spoke quickly and asked millions of questions. “You’re like a kid in a candy store,” one of the managers said. she was. Aoun was helpless. This is where she wanted to be more than anywhere else in the world.
She got the job. Over the next quarter century, Aoun worked on Deep Her Space Network and various other programs. Eventually, she became a manager, overseeing the guidance, navigation, and control systems that help the spacecraft fly.
In 2014, she was given a choice. Aoun could remain as a manager, a key position within the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hierarchy, or take over the fledgling project to develop a small helicopter that could one day fly to Mars. There is.
Aoun took the leap. She and her small team worked on the technical details of the engineering challenge, which would have been nearly impossible because the air is so thin on the Red Planet. But even as the team progressed, formidable adversaries lined up against the program, eager to get in on the plan. Perseverance Rover to Mars in 2020.
At JPL, in the upper floors of the NASA headquarters building in Washington, D.C., and at the Capitol, these critics attempted murder again and again. Originality and ingenuity. And I almost succeeded many times.
Here’s the inside story of how Aoun and a few Mars flight advocates ultimately won.
The origin of originality
JPL’s mad scientists have been dreaming of flying to Mars for some time. An engineer named Bob Balaram started working on the idea in his 1990s, when he and a small team received a small amount of funding and put the concept to paper. But before we could start building anything, we ran out of money. This project he was frozen for more than 10 years.
New life was breathed into it in 2013 when Charles Elachi, the Lebanese-born scientist and engineer who served as JPL’s longtime director, was touring the guidance and navigation division. The group had about 1,000 employees, one of whom, Mr. Aoun, was a deputy manager. She was guiding Elachi and René Fredat, a senior engineer at the institute. After visiting the drone lab, they boarded a small bus to their next stop.
“Why aren’t we flying drones and helicopters on Mars?” Elachi asked Hredat.
Neither he nor Aoun had a good answer. So Elachi asked Balaram and several others to update their calculations from the 1990s and to determine whether the miniaturization revolution spurred by cell phone technology could make flight on Mars possible. provided funding. The vehicle must be very lightweight and still be able to rotate. It is also possible to rotate the blades at thousands of revolutions per minute. Aoun was asked to support the project on the side.
Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images
In the end, her time was getting longer and longer. In September 2014, Aoun had to decide whether to remain in a management role in a large department or take on the helicopter project. Even then, the political winds swirling around this idea will likely take up valuable article space. Perseverance A probe from a scientific experiment.
“In hindsight, I realize how big of a deal it was to give up,” she said of her senior management role at JPL. “But I didn’t think much of it at the time. I felt like I had something to give.”
It was a big opportunity for her, so she grabbed it.
