19 Quotes by Jim Erickson

With the rovers we've actually been able to go look and pick the things we wanted to see whether it was up on top of hills or whether it was down inside the craters, you name it.

He is persisting in his fears. He was afraid of the police.

This was a great dress rehearsal for the Io encounters. We've been wondering how the spacecraft might hold up when it gets close to Io. This latest brush with radiation makes us think that the odds of survival may be fairly good.

It is an indication that more parts may be showing their age.

It does cause tension in the family when you have to make choices between having Thanksgiving with your family and going off to solve a problem on the spacecraft.

We now have to make long-term plans for the vehicles because they may be around for quite a while. Either mission could end tomorrow with a random part failure. With the rovers already performing well beyond their original design lifetimes, having a part wear out and disable a rover is a distinct possibility at any time.

We anticipated the spacecraft's star scanner would detect about 300 to 400 pulse counts of radiation, so imagine our surprise when the instruments showed Galileo had flown through 1,400 pulse counts,

We're developing a mode for keeping the arm out in front. We'll essentially stow it now by putting the instrument pack up over the rover's deck.

Everybody knows that eventually we will die. They are metal. They are machines. So sooner or later the tool will break.