Retired Software Engineer for NASA JPL Mars Rovers

Kim Gostelow received his PhD from UCLA in Engineering and Computer Science in 1972.  Among the positions he has held are at Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam (SARA) Amsterdam, Netherlands; Professor of Information and Computer Science at University of California, Irvine; and member of the technical staff at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (Caltech).  His work at JPL included the design and implementation of numerous software components, with particular contributions to the JPL software design process, and to the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) software for the Mars rovers.  He is now retired and lives in Upper Black Eddy, PA.

His presentation will be about the perspective of a flight software engineer who participated in all five NASA Mars rovers, focusing on the hardware and software engineering that makes the rovers a reality.  From launch to landing, the presentation will show how the rovers get to Mars, including some of the lesser known problems that occurred and how they were overcome, sometimes millions of miles away.