Ex-UST student is lead NASA software engineer of Mars rover 'Curiosity'

By ROUCHELLE DINGLASAN, GMA News

Published August 20, 2012 4:00pm

Lloyd Manglapus, a former student of the University of Santo Tomas, is a flight software technical lead of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Mars rover “Curiosity.” In an email to GMA News Online on Monday, Manglapus, 42, said he is also "Curiosity's" mission operations flight software chair. The $2.5-billion "Curiosity" touched down on the planet Mars on August 6 to search for organic materials and other chemicals considered key to life.

Manglapus grew up in Marikina City. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at UST for two years. He later finished his studies at the University of Southern California in the US, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in 1993; and a Master of Science in Computer Science also from USC in 1996.

In 1989, his family moved to the United States because his mother, a nurse, found an opportunity to work there. Manglapus said, “Curiosity is a very complex system and any changes to its software brought about by feature requests and bug fixes need to be managed very carefully.” As the flight software technical lead of "Curiosity," Manglapus evaluates software change requests and investigates anomaly reports. As a mission operations flight software chair, he makes performance and health checks of "Curiosity's" flight software.

Patience and pakikisama

Asked about the Filipino traits that helped him excel in his career, Manglapus cited two values: patience and pakikisama.

“Patience has helped me a lot. As an engineer, I encounter technical problems every time. It takes patience to be able to work through each issue and move on to the next,” Manglapus said.

“Being able to get along well with others or pakikisama has also been beneficial. It takes friends to be able to do this job and augment your support system,” he added.

Although Manglapus has been living in the US for many years, he says the Filipino culture is still a big part of his life.

“The Filipino culture has always been a big part of my life - even now, living thousands of miles away from where I grew up. It's a beautiful culture and is something that Gilda [his wife] and I try to keep alive in our family and instill in our son Jaellan,” he explained.

“I miss all the Filipino food and traditions around Christmas and New Year time - Simbang Gabi, the Christmas and New Year's eve parties, the sight, smell and taste of bibingka,” Manglapus said.

“Since I left, I haven't been back to the Philippines for the Christmas and New Year holidays. I miss them terribly and hope to be able to come back and enjoy the festivities again,” he added.

Pinoys at NASA

Manglapus said there are many Filipinos working for NASA. He even encouraged other Pinoys to join the ‘hood.’

“If you have the desire to work for NASA, I'd say go for it! NASA is a great institution to work for - it has big goals, big accomplishments and big expectations; but don't let this intimidate you from your dream job,” he said.

Asked if he had experienced discrimination in his work place, he noted that he has not felt intimidated with his work mates.

“One of the great things I like about NASA-JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) is that it's basically a melting pot of different kinds of people and cultures. Where I work, people get along very well, respect differing opinions and develop lifelong friendships,” Maglapus said.

Manglapus said apart from scientists and engineers, NASA also needs business administrators, accountants, human resources, technicians, firefighters, doctors, and nurses etc.

“NASA is made up of dedicated individuals who come from a variety of backgrounds and perform a broad spectrum of work… All of these roles are needed to support the nation's space program,” Manglapus said.

One of the NASA engineers who worked on the Mars rover "Curiosity" happens to be a young Filipino-American -- Gregory Villar III, 25, whose mother is from Novaliches and whose father is from Taguig.
Although born and raised in the United States, Villar studied high school at St. Louis University Laboratory High School in Baguio City.

He took up Physics at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in Pomona in the US.

'Curiosity' zaps first Martian rock

Meanwhile, Reuters on Monday said Mars rover Curiosity zapped its first rock on Sunday with a high-powered laser gun designed to analyze Martian mineral content, and scientists declared their target practice a success.

The robotic science lab aimed its laser beam at the fist-sized stone nearby and shot the rock with 30 pulses over a 10-second period, NASA said in a statement issued from mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles.

Each pulse delivers more than 1 million watts of energy for about five one-billionths of a second, vaporizing a pinhead-sized bit of the rock to create a tiny spark, which is analyzed by a small telescope mounted on the instrument.

The ionized glow, which can be observed and recorded from up to 25 feet (7 meters) away, is then split into its component wavelengths by three spectrometers that give scientists information about the chemical makeup of the target rock.

The combined system, called the Chemistry-and-Camera instrument, or ChemCam, is capable of discerning more than 6,000 different wavelengths in the ultraviolet, infrared and visible light spectrum and is designed to take about 14,000 measurements throughout Curiosity's Mars mission.

The purpose of Sunday's initial use of the laser, conducted at roughly 3 a.m. Pacific time (1100 GMT), was as "target practice" for the instrument. But scientists will examine the data they receive to determine composition of the rock, which they dubbed "Coronation," NASA said.

"We got a great spectrum of Coronation - lots of signal," said ChemCam principal investigator Roger Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the instrument was developed. "After eight years of building the instrument, it's payoff time."

Curiosity, a one-ton, six-wheeled vehicle the size of a compact car, landed inside a vast, ancient impact crater near Mars' equator on Aug. 6 after an eight-month, 354-million-mile voyage through space. Its two-year mission is aimed at determining whether or not the planet most like Earth could have hosted microbial life.

The rover's primary target is Mount Sharp, a towering mound of layered rock rising from the floor of Gale Crater. But mission controllers are gradually checking out Curiosity's sophisticated array of instruments before sending it on its first road trip across the Martian landscape.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity project marks NASA's first astrobiology mission since the Viking probes to Mars during the 1970s and the most advanced robotic science lab sent to another world.

The technique employed by ChemCam has been used to examine the composition of materials in other extreme environments, such as inside nuclear reactors and on the sea floor.

The technology also has experimental applications in environmental monitoring and cancer detection. But Sunday's exercise, conducted during Curiosity's 13th full day on Mars, was the first use in interplanetary exploration, NASA said.

Before Curiosity embarks on its 4.3-mile (7-kilometer) trek to the foot of Mount Sharp, a journey that could take six months, mission controllers plan to send it out on a shorter jaunt to a spot 1,600 feet (500 meters) from its landing site. - with a report from Steve Gorman, Reuters/VVP, GMA News

Tags: unitedstates, universityofsantotomas, nasa, curiosity