Fascinating news came out of Western University late last week. A PhD student there was honoured by NASA with a prestigious award because of his work operating the Mars rover Curiosity from his lab at the school.
Western researchers do a lot of cool things. They’re in the testing phase of the world’s first AIDS vaccine. They recently proved that alcohol impairs vision. They do cutting edge stuff. But until now, we didn’t know that Raymond Francis was a member of the NASA team tasked with keeping Curiosity moving and probing the red planet.
In The Big Bang Theory, Howard Wolowitz keeps a Mars rover moving but he lured women to his lab with a promise they’d be able to drive it. His antics got it stuck and made fictional, international news. As it turns out, it’s not that simple. You don’t just push a joystick and run the vehicle like a remote-controlled car. There’s a 15-20 minute lag-time. It’s almost 34 million miles away, after all. As a member of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory missions team, Francis plunks directions into a computer and the rover follows them later.
Curiosity is on one side of Mars and Opportunity is on the other so there’s no worry about them colliding.
Francis now has a NASA Group Achievement Award which signifies his contribution to the overall mission to explore space. Western says Francis pioneered ways of studying weather patterns on the planet. Smart guy. And there’s no sign that he’s using his powers to get dates with women, aka, pulling a Wolowitz.