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My name is Bobak Ferdowsi, and I'm one of the flight
directors on the Mars Science Lab Curiosity mission.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Our mission to Mars, which landed in August of 2012,
basically is landing a 2,000-pound Rover on the
surface of Mars.
Landing something like that and having so much invested is
really just all the reward that I could have hoped for.
People can find more info about Curiosity and about just
Mars in general on our website, mars.jpl.nasa.gov.
And it's got all kinds of really cool pictures and
science, and everything on there.
Even as a child I realized that I wanted to do something
like science and engineering.
I always had a real inclination to try and
understand how the world works.
I started out maybe a little bit more of the physics kind
of world, in experimental physics.
And then when Pathfinder, which is one of our more
recent Mars missions, landed, it was the first time since I
was a kid to have received these
pictures of another planet.
And that's when I knew engineering, that's the track
I want to go down.
I've definitely played.
We've done some game nights, usually with the classics,
like Monopoly and things.
I am a little guilty of maybe getting a little too animated
during those games sometimes.
So I was happy that it wasn't a competitive game.
I occasionally play computer games.
I don't know that I should admit this, but I've
definitely played "World of Warcraft" for a while.
That can be pretty addictive.
I'm also starting to transition onto the next
generation of rover, which is a 2020 mission, which we're
really excited about.
We're going to take the same landing system and hopefully
land another rover or a mission that will accomplish
the next step in science after this one.