NASA scientist returns with second motivational talk at UTAR

Front row, fifth from left: Florence Tan with participants

On 25 September 2022, UTAR Centre for Corporate and Community Development (CCCD) organised a talk titled “Space Talk: From Muar to Mars” at UTAR Sungai Long Campus and via Facebook Live. Invited to give the talk was Deputy Chief Technologist (DCT) for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Florence Tan. Held for the second time, her first talk titled “Gravity Assists and Adventures in Building Spaceflight Missions” took place on 15 July 2022 at Sungai Long Campus. Participants from UTAR and various other universities were present to listen to her insightful talk.

Florence Tan first spoke about her experience getting into and interning at NASA, to which she stated that she was helped by several people at NASA, who eventually became her mentors. She also talked about early proposals that helped to enhance space exploration, such as the proposal to build mass spectrometers during the early 90s which are noses to sniff out the atmospheres of planets and moons, and the proposal to launch the Cassini-Huygens Mission.

Florence Tan during her talk

Speaking of her missions at NASA, Florence Tan said, “I worked on a few different missions, one of which was the Cassini-Huygens Mission, where the Huygens Probe was detached to fly down to Titan, one of Saturn’s many moons. While we were working on Cassini, we were also asked to work with the Japanese government to build Nozomi, which was Japan’s first interplanetary spacecraft. Another mission includes the Comet Nucleus Tour, also known as the Contour mission, where the probe was supposed to fly through three comets and collect gas and dust samples of their environment.”

Next, Florence Tan moved on to talk about one of her biggest projects, which was the creation of the Mars Curiosity Rover. “One of the most important missions I worked on was the Mars Curiosity Rover. We had to come up with a new innovative way to land Curiosity. Thus, we utilised thrusters, sky cranes and tethers to ensure it had a smooth landing,” said Florence Tan. She added, “Curiosity’s main objective is to understand if Mars can ever become a habitat for life. That is why we added many instruments to help do geology work. We attached drills for it to dig into the surface, cameras for the rover to take selfies of its surroundings, wheels for mobility, communication devices, and its most important feature called SAM or Sample Analysis at Mars, which collects and measures chemicals and light elements around Mars to analyse for any signs of life.”

Finally, she gave a couple of useful advice to the attendees. She advised them that life is filled with troubles but with enough perseverance and determination, those hurdles can be overcome.

The talk ended with a short Q&A session, souvenir presentation session and group photo session.

Florence Tan (left) receiving a souvenir from CCCD Director Lim Guat Yen (right)