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My name is Tom Kerslake.

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And I’m glad to say I’m a solar array
Engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center

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in Cleveland, Ohio.

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Music

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I’m very glad to say and very excited to
say I get to work on Solar Arrays for the

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Asteroid Redirect Mission and more specifically
the solar electric propulsion module that

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the solar array will power.

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And the reason that is exciting is we feel
that is a great stepping stone to get humans

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to Mars.

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Because we’re going to be able to launch,
travel millions of miles in space.

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We’re going to go out to an Asteroid or
perhaps even one of the moons or Mars and

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grab a very large boulder and re-direct it
all the way back into earth orbit.

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And that is a great precursor
demonstration of the engineering and technology,

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not only for the solar array, but the solar
electric propulsion system because in the

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future then we’re going to be able move
even larger payloads that will be habitats

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and landers and all the equipment that humans
are going to need to eventually get to Mars

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orbit and eventually down to the surface of
Mars.

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NASA over the years with its contractor teams
have been developing very advanced, light

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weight flexible solar arrays and in fact one
of them was launched to Mars and it performed

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beautifully on the surface of Mars to provide
power to the Phoenix Lander.

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NASA and its partners have been developing
advanced Solar Array technology that can be

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used, not only on the solar electric propulsion
module to redirect an asteroid, but it can

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be grown in size and it can be used eventually
move around even larger objects than our asteroid