February 16, 2021

EP. 201 — How Do You Persevere, Mars Rover? with Christina Hernandez

Put on your finest loungewear and raise your favorite coffee mug because this week’s episode of Getting Curious is an EVENT! After six years of incredible work, NASA’s Perseverance rover is now exploring Mars, and Jonathan spoke with Christina Hernandez, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, all about the mission just before landing day. Listen in to learn more about the Red Planet, the Perseverance mission, and Christina’s advice for the next generation of NASA innovators.

Keep up with rover coverage on Twitter @NASAPersevere and Instagram @NASA, and with Christina’s amazing career on Twitter @estrellasycafe. For Spanish-language coverage, make sure to check out @NASA_es on Twitter and Instagram.

Find out what today’s guest and former guests are up to by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out all new Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @jonathan.vanness on Facebook.

Transcript

JVN [00:00:00] Welcome to Getting Curious. I’m Jonathan Van Ness and every week I sit down for a 40 minute conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious. On today’s episode, I’m joined by NASA engineer Christina Hernandez, where I ask her: Mars Rover, How Do You Persevere? Welcome to Getting Curious, this is Jonathan Van Ness, and can I just say, if I could ever, like, change my music for an episode of Getting Curious and change it to, like, a very suspenseful, gorgeous, like, Serial-esque, like, podcast music I would, because the suspense is real. I’m so excited about it, I just I can’t even build it up anymore right now because I think that was much as I can do without being too excited. So, welcome Christina Hernandez, who is an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. And you’re working on NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover mission, which in real life is going to be landing, like, tom

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