Yet another great week on Mars, this is planetary radio. Welcome back everyone. If you watch the landing of opportunity a second Mars

exploration rover on the Meridiani Planam of Mars, you saw a young

headset-wearing fellow standing in front of the Murr team calling the shots.

That young guy was flight director Chris Lewicki, and he'll join us on this. the cropping contest. Let's get started by meeting another of the student astronauts at

JPL. I'll be right back with Chris. Hi, I'm Whelan Tans from Singapore. I'm 14 years old. I'm one of the student astronauts

elected by the Planetary Society. Vignan and I came at a very interesting time.

We have managed to see a problem with spirit and a possible solution and the opportunity

landing which was really the best.

We were in the science assessment room which was nicknamed

EDL War Room. We had all the EDL Sciences with us. The atmosphere was

really tense and the cheering that occurred after the landing was amazing.

You can really feel these people's pride.

Of course, I will be telling all my friends about the experience here,

and hopefully I will be able to make presentations to my school and maybe go through

our country science center but that is just tentative in what I really hope to do.

Young as he is,

University of Arizona graduate Chris Lewicki has already been exploring

space and preparing to explore space for many years. His rise to flight director for the

Mars Exploration Rover missions at JPL has been nothing short of

meteoric if you'll pardon that odd metaphor. Like so many of our recent guests,

getting a chance to speak with him, meant adjusting for Martian business

hours.

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