Engineering Students Learn What It Takes to Get to Mars!

This week, all of the engineering classes at Grace were highlighted by a visit from Mark Schwochert, Supervisor of the Flight Detector and Camera Systems Group at JPL. He shared all of the incredible missions that he has worked on during his 35 years at JPL. The most recognizable of those projects were the camera on the Hubble Space Telescope and several of the Mars missions: Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit & Opportunity), Curiosity, Insight, and most recently Perseverance. He shared a little about each of those missions and highlighted it with the way the most recent Mars Mission, Perseverance, used cameras and technology to choose a safe landing location for the rover. 

At the conclusion of his presentation, Mark showed an image of a miniscule portion of the universe taken by the Hubble Space Telescope displaying approximately 3000 galaxies; he commented how the Deep Field Image is a testament to how great our God is. While many people claim that science disproves the existence of God, Mark believes this image and other scientific discoveries confirm the existence of God because the only truly rational conclusion of the complexity of the universe is intelligent design.

Our students were blessed to listen to him share his experiences, and we look forward to visiting him at JPL in the future!

Mark Schwochert enjoyed his time at Grace. "It is an honor to be able to use the talents God has given me to help mankind better understand this great universe He has created.  Through these amazing discoveries we see more and more of God's greatness and worthiness to be praised.  The opportunity to share some of these experiences with the students at Grace Brethren is such a joy.  I hope some of them were not only inspired to continue their pursuit careers in engineering, math or science but more importantly to glorify God is whatever they do!"  Colossians 1:16-17: For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Deep Field Image from The Hubble Space Telescope.  This image shows just one 24-millionth of the whole sky, almost all of the 3,000 objects in the image are galaxies.

Main image shows Schwochert holding a 3D model of one of the two Perserverance Navigation Cameras.