I want to call out one of our other government agency partners.
Thousands of people working on this to make this happen at the Jet Propulsion Lab, at NASA Centers, with our industry partners and international partners. The only nation that’s been able to do that. He does want to congratulate the team personally, and I told him we will make that happen, and so looking forward to having the President of United States congratulate the team this week. He wanted me to congratulate the team for him. Only a president can say “Congratulations, man.” He talked about how proud he was of what we accomplished, and he wanted me to send my his regards to Percy, and he wanted to congratulate the team. I also have to tell you that about an hour after landing, I got a phone call from the President of the United States, and his first words were “Congratulations, man,” and I knew it was him. I could not be more proud of the team and what they’ve done, what they’ve accomplished under challenging circumstances. Congratulations.Īll right, I’m going to turn the podium over to Steve Jurczyk.
We now have the most ambitious rover yet on the surface of Mars. But before I turn it over the podium, I just wanted to take one minute to recognize what a thrilling day today has been. And if you’re on social media, use the hashtag #CountdownToMars. All right, so we are going to be taking questions during this briefing, so if you’re a member of the media and you’re on our phone lines, press star-one and you’ll be put into the queue. We have a group of the Perseverance team members. And over here, we have a special group on our video conference. We have Matt Wallace, the Perseverance deputy project manager and Al Chen, entry, descent and landing lead Ken Farley, the Perseverance project scientist and then coming from our surface operations area, we have Jennifer Trosper, deputy project manager. We have Lori Glaze, NASA’s planetary science director. Up on the stage, we have Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. And then we also have John McNamee Perseverance’s project manager. We also have Mike Watkins, the director of JPL. So standing on the floor of Von Karman Auditorium, we have Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s acting administrator.
We have our masks on and the layout is a little different, but I want to introduce our speakers to you. So because of the coronavirus pandemic, everything’s going to look a little different today. I’m Jia-Rui Cook of JPL’s digital news and media office, and I’ll be your host today as we gather reactions from our key players from the landing and also give a glimpse of what’s to come. Hello and welcome to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where we have just landed the most sophisticated and most capable rover yet on the surface of Mars, the Perseverance Rover.