On November 26th, the next stage of interplanetary exploration is set to take place with the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory. Following the successful rover steps of Spirit & Opportunity, the Mars Science Laboratory is a vastly upgraded and larger rover that is designed to peer deeper into the mysteries of the red planet. While Spirit & Opportunity descended using parachutes and an airbag, the Mars Science Laboratory is designed with the most advanced and precise landing systems ever attempted. These systems, rely in part on a radar system to determine how far above the ground the module is and to tell it when to fire its parachute and rockets. This system was developed in part by Wayne Rothermich, who is a member of Seymour Duncan’s Research and Development team.

How did you get started working with the Mars Science Laboratory?
“It came through a friend of mine who was setting up a small company to do consulting for NASA and he asked me to come along and help him out with that. This was several years ago and we put together a little company to do consulting for NASA.”
Tell me about the part you worked on for the Mars Science Laboratory.
“I worked on the lander, which lands the rover down on Mars. They do various things at various altitudes, like launch a parachute or deploy the rover out from under the crane. What I was working on was the landing radar that figured out how high the lander was from the surface of Mars. That’s the good part, the funny part is that once the rover is on Mars, the lander goes off and crashes on Mars and becomes space junk. That was one thing I did, another thing I did was work on a probe that went to Jupiter called the Juno probe. What that is going to do is probe the atmosphere of Jupiter and look at the gasses at various heights and try to figure out how the weather works on Jupiter. I worked on a part called a Microwave Radiometer, which basically looks at the emissions of various layers of cloud banks and by looking at those and comparing the radio emissions at different radio frequencies, you can find what the clouds are made of.”

“Another thing I have worked on is an upgrade to the Deep Space Network, which are the big antennas that listen to all the spacecraft that are out there. So not only do I have parts on the spacecraft, I have parts on the ground that will be listening to the spacecraft.”
When did you start working for Seymour Duncan?
“It was about 8 years ago and I worked here for 3 years, took a year off and worked for NASA and I’ve been here for another 3-4 years now.”
What areas do you tend to focus on in R&D?
“I do a little bit of everything. My main thrust here is the electrical design of the stompboxes and the active pickups.”
How do you feel about having something you worked on go to another planet?
“It’s really exciting, it’s one of those gee-whiz things. Everybody says wouldn’t it be fun to work for NASA, it’s really interesting work but quite frankly it’s much more fun to work here. We have a really good crew of people here and it’s always fun to work with good people.”