“Perseverance” and “Ingenuity” aren’t just the names of spacecraft on Mars; they are also the human qualities we need to get us through the post-pandemic world, said Adam Steltzner, chief engineer and mission leader of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission.

Steltzner, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, was the keynote speaker on the second day of the (ISC)² Security Congress 2021 , taking place virtually through Wednesday, October 20.

After NASA landed the nuclear-powered “Curiosity” rover on Mars in 2012, the agency worked to send another rover to the Red Planet. That rover, “Perseverance,” landed on Mars in February 2021, accompanied by a helicopter-like robotic spacecraft called “Ingenuity.”

Getting there wasn’t easy, Steltzner recalled. It required adjusting to a new way of working brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic with a skeleton crew of six at JPL and people working from home. The team had to draw on significant amounts of human perseverance to execute the mission.

“We landed a rover on the surface of Mars in the middle of a global pandemic. We launched her from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the height of the summer surge.” The rover and the Mars helicopter were named before the pandemic but their names are “great descriptors of not only spacecraft but of the human attributes we need to weather this storm,” he said.

“As we turn to look to the future, we are staring into the unknown. What will recovery look like? It is likely that between now and the future, we will have to exercise perseverance and ingenuity within ourselves again and again and again.”

And with those words, Steltzner launched into the history of the Mars rovers and the challenges and doubts his team faced along the way. One of the biggest challenges was to figure out how to land rovers on Mars without damaging them. The idea of using a “sky crane” was considered crazy at first, but it worked. The sky crane functioned much like the rescue baskets used by Coast Guard and Navy helicopters to gently deposit the rover on the surface of Mars.  

He also spoke about the curiosity that sparked his interest in space exploration. When he was younger, he aspired to rock stardom. One night after a gig, he noticed the stars had moved in the sky from their position at the start of the gig. Steltzner’s curiosity got him to sign up for classes at a community college, and so he started on the path that brought him to the JPL to help put nuclear-powered rovers on Mars.

Collaborative Team

The Mars missions require the work of a collaborative team with members who contribute and listen to each other to solve problems, Steltzner said. “If you have a collaborative, super-charged team in which everybody is bringing the most of themselves, you will get the best possible product out of that group.”

Steltzner said he developed a trick to facilitate collaboration and have a good time while doing it.

“I find something to love in everyone I work with. That might sound like northern California hippie talk. It’s not hippie talk. It is me wanting to have a good time. I spend a lot of time with my colleagues. I have a choice: I can find something to hate or dislike in my colleagues, or alternatively I can look for something to like, nay love, in the people I work with. If I look for something to connect with, I have a good time. I have a blast at work.”

Others pick up on his approach and start doing the same. “And pretty soon, we’re in this big collaborative love fest.”

Another lesson Steltzner said he has learned working in a collaborative, supercharged team is to make room for everybody’s ideas. “I’ve been learning to talk less and listen more. I find I learn a lot more from listening than talking.”

Cybersecurity and Space

In answering a question from (ISC)² CEO Clar Rosso after delivering his speech, Steltzner drew a parallel between what his team does and the work of cybersecurity professionals. Rosso had asked him about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in a collaborative team.

“Cybersecurity and spacecraft engineering share a couple of things,” he said. “We don’t really know what we’re doing. That is, we’re always inventing solutions to new challenges. When you don’t know what you are doing when you are operating at the edge of your capacities, you need all the ideas you can get. The ideas you can find in a diverse, manifold team are more than if everybody has the same perspective.”

Diversity, he said, makes it possible to get the “most successful ideas out into the room.”

During the pandemic, he said, perseverance and ingenuity got everyone through uncharted territory, coming up with solutions that otherwise would not have materialized. In some cases, better ways of accomplishing tasks were achieved, he said.

Now as humans push forward on earth, the Mars rovers continue to do their work, collecting samples that will eventually be brought back to advance our understanding of our sister planet and the universe. Meanwhile, NASA is already working on another mission to land a spacecraft on one of Jupiter’s Moons, Europa, to further our search for life elsewhere and better our understanding of the universe. Curiosity, perseverance and ingenuity will play a big role there too.