Destination Mars

Before he answers any questions, Mark Kirasich wants to clarify the nature of his job. “I am NASA’s Orion program manager,” he says, presuming — correctly — that emphasizing his employer’s name would hold particular significance for his alma mater’s quarterly magazine.

Because, as it turns out, another guy occupies an equivalent position with Lockheed Martin, NASA’s main contractor on the Orion deep-space exploration project. His name is Mike Hawes. “And Mike, believe it or not, is also a Notre Dame graduate,” Kirasich says. The two engineers and their teams work together every day on the development of a spacecraft intended to transport humans to Mars.

Read more here.

July 2, 2019

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