© 2024 KRWG
News that Matters.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Not My Job: We Quiz NASA Engineers On Mars Candy

Missions engineers Bobak Ferdowsi (left) and Adam Steltzner — also known as "Mokawk guy" and "Elvis guy," respectively — helped land the Mars Curiosity rover on Sunday night.
Left: Brian van der Brug-Pool/Getty Images
/
Right: Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images
Missions engineers Bobak Ferdowsi (left) and Adam Steltzner — also known as "Mokawk guy" and "Elvis guy," respectively — helped land the Mars Curiosity rover on Sunday night.

On Sunday night, while the rest of us were ooohing and aaahing over gymnastics, a bunch of propeller heads at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were flawlessly steering a billion-dollar robotic space laboratory the size of a minivan to a landing on Mars.

Missions engineers Bobak Ferdowsi and Adam Steltzner — whose hairstyles have led them to be nicknamed "Mokawk guy" and "Elvis guy," respectively — are two of the guys behind the landing of the Mars rover Curiosity, and very well might be the Sexiest Nerds Ever.

We've invited Ferdowsi and Steltzner to play a game called "Try landing on this Mars!" Believe it or not, it is actually easier to get a camera onto the surface of planet Mars than into the factory of the incredibly secretive Mars candy company. We'll ask two experts on Mars the planet three questions about Mars the candy.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.