David Lavery, a program executive for solar system exploration on NASA’s Mars science lab teamand the team leader for the Mars Curiosity rover, has been given the 2013 Science and Environment Sammie – or, Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal.
Over a decade of engineering and scientific research went into the mission. The rover made a perfect landing with a one-of-a-kind supersonic parachutelast year and began collecting climate and geological information. There was a brief alarm when the rover discovered a plastic shard that turned out to be debris from entry, but since then it has found materials that indicate the planet at one time possessed conditions favorable for microbial life, notes the Partnership for Public Service, which administers the awards.
It said thatLavery "brought to the project strong management skills, state-of-the-art-engineering knowledge, a deep technical understanding of the rover’s landing requirements and a vision of what could be accomplished."
PPS likened the one-ton spacecraft to the size of a Mini Cooper car, and said that the team had to overcome a computer memory failure (possibly due to a cosmic ray strike), and an event where the rover defaulted to safe mode and was essentially stuck in "pause."
