AIAA HRS Landing Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover, David Way, 2021-05-14

On February 18th, NASA successfully landed the Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater, Mars. Perseverance is the fifth, and most advanced, rover to survive the harrowing Entry, Descent, and Landing, known as the “seven minutes of terror”. Learn about Langley’s role in this historic mission from aerospace engineer and team lead, David Way.

Dr. David Way is an aerospace engineer assigned to the Atmospheric Flight and Entry Systems Branch (AFESB) at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) since 2001. His areas of expertise are flight mechanics, trajectory simulation, and Entry Descent and Landing (EDL) system performance. He holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the United States Naval Academy as well as a M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. David was the LaRC team lead for the Mars Science Laboratory mission that took the Curiosity rover from concept to safe landing in 2012. He served again in the same role throughout the eight-year development of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission.