Monrovia Company's Analyst on Mars Rover Landing: 'Everything Worked Right'

An employee of a Monrovia company will be monitoring every move the Mars Rover Curiosity makes.

Robert Brodkin is a support product analyst for Monrovia-based Exelis, Inc. The company operates the communications network that allows NASA's scientists to communicate with the Mars Rover Curiosity through the Deep Space Network.

After a 36-week, 154-million-mile journey capped by a highly complex but flawlessly executed landing sequence, the rover Curiosity spent its first full day on Mars Monday at the dawn of a two-year $2.5 billion mission designed to determine if the Red Planet ever supported life and if it can do so in the future.

Brodkin, who commutes from Ontario to the main DSN facility in Monrovia, chalked it up to one in a long line of missions he has directly contributed to. His long-time employer, Exelis, handles the communication for more than 20 other U.S. spacecraft.

"Everything worked right and we are there," Brodkin told Patch Monday, just hours after Curiosity landed. "I felt pretty confident because the team at JPL left no stone unturned to get it right."

Brodkin explained that a team of six people—three contractors and three Exelis employees—serve as a support group for this latest Mars mission.

"We receive data from the spacecraft and we provide assistance in generating those navigation files to the DSN so they know every single path it takes, every sequence of events," Brodkin said. "The frequencies change, so they have to acquire the signals from the antenna."

The rover's primary mission Monday was raising its high-gain antenna to better enable that communication.

Curiosity soon sent back its first picture, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground, then a clearer version of the same, followed by an image from the other side of the rover—a plutonium-powered laboratory on six wheels that weighs a ton and is the size of a small car.

Mission managers will also be assessing the status of the rover's instruments. But the Rover's first foray from its landing site will not take place until next month; no soil examination is to take place until the middle of September at the earliest, and no rock drilling will occur before October.

"Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Curiosity...is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars—or if the planet can sustain life in the future."

Curiosity is billed as the most scientifically advanced rover ever sent to another planet. It carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science equipment on the previous Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. It is the first rover to carry a laser-firing instrument designed to check the composition of rocks. It is also equipped with a drill and scoop to pick up soil samples that can be analyzed on the spot inside the rover.

For Brodkin, who earned a master's degree in information systems from Almeda University, the successful landing of Curiosity comes as he approaches retirement. But first he wants to complete 50 years on the job.

"I have 526 days left, that is a year and a half," said Brodkin, whose youngest grandchild, Nissa-Belle Vidal, is a 2012 graduate of Murrieta Valley High School. "You do it because you love your work."

During those nearly 50 years, he said he has worked on at least 30 missions that JPL is using, including the Voyager, a space exploration craft launched by NASA in 1977.

"The Voyager is still out there, it is billions of miles away," Brodkin said.

"I was there for the first close-up pictures of the moon, the first landing on Mars, it always amazes me. I feel like a pioneer sometimes."

—City News and Nathan McIntire, editor of Monrovia Patch, contributed to this report.