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“I’m Allen Chen; I’m the operations
lead on the Entry, Descent and Landing team

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for the Mars Science Laboratory project.

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Right now I’m coordinating our preparations
for entry, descent and landing.

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\hWe land in August, a few months from now
and we’re still hurrying to get all our

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stuff ready to make sure that we’re ready
to take the plunge.

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I’ll be telling people exactly what the
spacecraft is doing, you know roughly where

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it is and what it’s telling us is going
on during EDL.

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My parents always displayed an example that
education never stops.

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\hYou always want to learn as much as you
can and it doesn’t stop when you leave the

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classroom.

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\hMy parents added new skills while I was
still in high school and you know they got

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other degrees and a lot of the times it was
just for fun.

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We have essentially a copy of the spacecraft
over in a different building here where we

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can try to get this virtual spacecraft to
run through the motions it will go through

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during EDL.

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\hWe run trajectory simulations to understand
its performance.

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\hWe’ve probably literally run millions
of simulated cases from the cruise stage separation

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all the way to the ground to make sure we
get to where we are going.

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\hYou got to work hard.

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\hThere’s a lot of academics that you need
to get to this point in your career.

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\hBeyond that I would also emphasize that
it’s not just about science and math for

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say.

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\hIf you can’t talk about what you are doing,
you’re not going to get very far in this.

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\hYou’re going to have to convince people.

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\hThis is a type of mission and type of project
and type of thing that we do here that no

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one person can do by themselves.

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\hSo you got to work with a lot people and
learning how to work with those people is

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just as important as learning those basics
in science and math.

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That’s kind of the starting point but to
grow beyond that you need to be able to work

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with people.

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There’s a kind of exploration that we do
here that can’t be done anywhere else.

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\hThere’s certainly other places where you’re
doing things to make money or you’re doing

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things related to exploration, but here the
entire point of the place is about exploration.

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\hSo I think I finally came to that realization
sometime in late high school or early college