From Our Cleanroom to the Red Planet – Motiv on NASA’s Third Rock Radio

Unless you’re a NASA employee or a serious space geek enthusiast, you might not be too familiar with NASA’s radio station, Third Rock Radio. Still, for those who know, it’s one of the best places for insider info on what’s going on with NASA’s missions, plus some great music.

Case in point, Motiv’s Tom McCarthy sat down with Third Rock Radio to talk the Mars Rover and more.

As McCarthy said, even for a company with a history of sending capable robotics into space, the Perseverance Landing was something special.

We had some of those butterflies as we were waiting for that thing to land. We were excited about seeing that arm for the first time on another planet. It had just been sitting in our cleanroom a year before, and it’s a little surreal to then see that thing on another planet.

Another insight from the interview? The entire Perseverance Robotic Arm’s development process took about 4 years, largely due to collaborative changes related to the mission’s function as well as validating and testing the project.

McCarthy and host Steve Robison also dove into what it was like to successfully launch a rover during a pandemic, and Motiv’s current focus on lunar missions, including the COLDArm and the capabilities to operate overnight in the moon’s extreme cold environment.

They also looked further ahead to the sample return campaign that’s planned to bring back the samples of Martian soil being collected by the Perseverance Rover right now.

Take a watch below and then visit our Mars 2020 Perseverance rover page for all the details on Motiv’s contribution to this mission.