TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
An Idaho Woman on
MARS BY HAILEY MINTON
Kelly Lively was the project manager for the nuclear power system onboard the Perseverance Rover in the Mars 2020 mission. She and her Radioisotope Power Systems team help bring power to places where the sun doesn’t shine. The rover landed on the red planet on Feb. 18, 2020 and has begun carrying out its mission to seek signs of ancient life, and collect and cache samples of rock and soil. The landing site was chosen because the area shows evidence of water, and answers to Mars’ ability to
technology enjoys a decades-long history. Early power systems were used in the late ‘70s to send Voyagers 1 and 2 into space. They continue to send information back to earth 50-plus years later. Curiosity Rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, and Perseverance rover’s power systems that are an updated version use the same 20
www.idahomemagazine.com
Kelly Lively and her team fuel, test and deliver Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators to power space exploration, including the Perseverance Rover that recently landed on Mars.
sustain life may lie in the soil. Perseverance is the second of a three-mission strategy that will eventually bring soil samples back to earth for further study. This mission brings humanity one step closer to sending people to Mars. Kelly and her team are a part of Idaho National Laboratory. INL has a partnership with NASA to provide nuclear power systems that enable deep space exploration. Today, they use Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (MMRTGs). This same
Above: Kelly Lively talks to team members. Photos courtesy of Idaho National Laboratory.
