(CNN) — A college student from Macon, Georgia is part of the team that made NASA’s Mars rover mission possible.
Georgia Tech engineering major Breanna Ivey is a former NASA intern who worked on Perseverance’s mobility team.
That means she did the mathematical calculations that allows the rover to navigate on the red planet in its search for signs of ancient life.
“One of the abilities of the rover is that a user should be able to put in a location for the rover to travel to autonomously,” Ivey explained, “and so my job was to make sure that all of the distances and all of the angles and any mathematical transformations that had to be done, were being done correctly by the rover and it was a lot of math, and simulations and coding, that type of thing, it was a great learning experience and it was a lot of fun.”
Ivey hopes her work will be an example for young women and girls who look like her.
She wants others to take advantages of the many great opportunities available to all in science and technology.
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