Mars Rover Drivers Inspired By Ray Bradbury

Two of the drivers of the Mars Exploration Rovers, Ashley Stroupe and Scott Maxwell, were fortunate to host a very special visitor to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory a couple of years ago. Science fiction author Ray Bradbury came, and even though he was wheel-chair-bound, he received the grand tour, and the two rover drivers showed him huge panoramic images taken by the rovers and even let Bradbury drive a 3-D computer model of the rovers. Stroupe tells the story of Bradbury’s visit in the video above, and Maxwell told his version of the story in a blog post back in 2009, which was re-published on the Planetary Blog. Of Bradbury seeing the panoramas, Maxwell wrote, “These just happen to be perfect for Bradbury: color panoramic images of Mars, taken from a human’s perspective, but mounted close to a wheelchair-bound man’s height. It must have seemed to him that he was, for the first time, really there. On the edge of a crater. On top of a mountain. On the plains, looking at the crashed remnants of the spaceship we rode there. On Mars.”
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