TEDxDelft blog: getting goosebumps for Mars

If you are coming to TEDxDelft in the TU Delft Aula congress center on October 5, make sure you first watch National Geographic documentary Martian Mega Rover. Check out the 45 minute YouTube version below. It will give some great background about the technical challenges ahead for the Mars One team, that aims to send humans to Mars by 2023. Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp will be one of the performers at TEDxDelft.

The documentary tells the story of a team of engineers and scientists that work together to bring a car- sized rover to planet Mars. As a Space Systems Technologist having worked on a number of Space hardware projects, the number and complexity of the technological challenges brought forward in this documentary are unrivaled. An uneasy feeling will settle in your mind thinking: this baby is not going to fly. This feeling is comforted by the knowledge of the fact that it actually did: in the early morning of August 6 (NL time) 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory touched Martian ground and sent back blurry pictures indicating that the rover aka Curiosity landed right side up.