Charting the Orion's Flight to Mars

摘要

In 1981, Jon Friedman watched the first Columbia space shuttle's launch from a black-and-white TV screen. Friedman, now the aerospace manager at MathWorks, was watching the first test flight of NASA Orion from an iPad alongside his kids last December. Time passes and children grow up', but the passion for space exploration remains the same in the Friedman household. Friedman has another reason to care about the Orion's journey. When the Orion sets its course for Mars, it will rely on the guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) software developed in partnership with MathWorks to get there. "I want to congratulate the engineers at NASA, Lockheed Martin and Draper Laboratory who made it work," says Friedman. "[MathWorks] has always been about accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science."