Colorado Goes To Mars Again

LITTLETON, CO – By Petra Perkins for The Colorado Independent. May, 2018 — Why would you do that?” my son, Mike Surline, asked. “A long way to go, to see something that lasts only seconds.”

Yes, why? I’d just told him that I had traveled from Denver to Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, to witness the launch of his battery — the INSIGHT spacecraft battery he managed and tested — to Mars. He just didn’t get it.

“Your dad helped build the first Mars lander, Viking, y’know,” I said. “You were born while Terry was on the Viking project.”

Terry Surline had become an Air Force engineering manager for the NASA Titan rocket program before returning to Lockheed Martin as a civilian. He was part of the famous Viking mission, a Colorado-based Martin Marietta aerospace project that landed the first successful robot on Mars in 1976.

“Later, when we moved from Denver to Vandenberg you were in pre-school,” I explained. “Terry was a countdown manager on the Titan rocket program. Now, here you are — a technician who makes batteries at the same aerospace company your dad worked for. Your battery will power the next Mars robot. How cool is that? So, I have to see it, see it safely off the earth … see?”

Besides his dad (who died when Mike was 15), Mike’s family includes several “rocket scientists” – his step-dad who also worked on Viking, his uncle on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (another Colorado project) and me, his mom, an engineer on satellite programs. Although our family had built and launched model rockets for fun, I think Mike was a little surprised when I recently built a 3-stager that flew up from a Bear Creek field to 2,000 feet above ground. It deployed like a perfect ULA (United Launch Alliance) rocket.

ULA, whose headquarters is in Centennial, Colorado, built the Atlas V rocket that would propel INSIGHT to Mars. This would be the very first Mars-bound rocket to take off from Vandenberg. (Until now, all planetary rockets have gone from Cape Canaveral, Florida.)

READ MORE in The Colorado Independent

Petra Perkins
(Diana) Petra Perkins is a retired aerospace engineering manager at Lockheed Martin and now a Colorado author. www.petrapetra.com

Image: INSIGHT spacecraft in the clean room at Lockheed Martin. (Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin)