Space Operations Award Going to Mars Rover Team

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2010-099 March 25, 2010

Space Operations Award Going to Mars Rover Team

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-099&cid=release_2010-099

PASADENA, Calif. -- The team that operates NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity
will receive the 2010 International Space Ops Award for Outstanding Achievement.

The citation for the award, to be presented April 29 in Huntsville, Ala., says, "For
remarkable success in meeting unique and varied challenges of operating a rover on Mars
and establishing a model for future in-situ operations."

The Mars Exploration Rover Project landed the twin rovers on the Red Planet in January
2004 for missions that were initially planned to last for three months. The team has
operated the rovers for more than six years, making major science discoveries, driving a
combined total of more than 27.5 kilometers (17 miles) over often-challenging terrain, and
tending them through three Martian winters and potentially mission-ending dust storms.

The Space Ops Award for Outstanding Achievement is presented only once every two
years. A panel composed of members from several nations' space agencies selects the
recipient.

The International Committee on Technical Interchange for Space Mission Operations, also
known as the SpaceOps Organization, created the award to recognize "teams whose
exceptional contributions were critical to the success of one or more space missions." There
were only two prior recipients: the Landsat 5 Flight Operations Anomaly Team, in 2006,
and the Ulysses Mission Flight Team, in 2008.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. For more information about the Mars rovers, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

SpaceOps was founded in 1990 to foster continuous technical interchange on all aspects of
space mission operations and ground data systems, and to promote and maintain an
international community of space operations experts.

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