New Mars Programmer

eddieb

Vice Admiral
It's official! I'm now a proud member of the Mars Science Lab flight software development team. I get to write the software that runs on our next generation of mars rovers. It's a dream come true, to say the least, and I'll get to work with amazing and fun folks, too.

PIA04892_MSL_041029140426.jpg
 
Wow! That's freakin incredible. I'm sure you're not allowed to talk too much about it, but I'd love to hear anything you can tell!
Congratulations!
 
Congrats man, that's unbelievably cool... you know we'll be blaming the next cockup on you right? :)
 
does programming a space probe qualify as rocket scientist?
I think it should

slip a WC reference into the code. probably in the comment section so that it doesn't affect the program
 
Actually nothing is classified. However, flight software is ITAR.

How much does that affect you? Are there a lot of foreign people on the site? I'm working on the P-8, which is an ITAR plane, but it's being built at the same place where all kinds of international customers are around, so they're pretty strict about watching out for that kind of thing.
 
Wow, that's amazing. Does this mean you're working with all the people we watched reacting when the MERs touched down, or is it a different group?
 
So to clarify, MSL (Mars Science Lab) is the next generation of rover after MER (Spirit and Opportunity).

Yes, many of the people who worked on MER will continue on to MSL, while some have gotten promoted. But we can still instant message anyone on the former MER team if we have questions. Of course, many of the people you saw on TV are higher up managers rather than the ones working on day to day engineering implementations.

Probably I'll be working on high level behaviors.
 
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