Page 12 - MidWeek - Apr 7, 2021

12 MIDWEEK APRIL 7, 2021
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CHRISTOPHER PONG
AS A GUIDANCE AND CONTROL ENGINEER FOR NASA’S RECENT “PERCY” PROJECT, CHRISTOPHER PONG IS PROVING HE HAS WHAT IT TAKES TO EXPLORE THE MYSTERIES OF THE COSMOS.
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Ever since he was young, Christopher Pong has made it a point to keep his eyes fixed on the skies and beyond.
Fast-forward to Feb. 18 of this year, and Pong’s job as a guidance and control engineer for NASA’s successful Perseverance rover landing on Mars has become the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
Specifically, Pong served as an attitude control engineer on the project. In that role, he helped esti- mate the attitude, or orientation, of the spacecraft using a sun sensor and star scanner, and assisted in firing the thrusters to alter Perse- verance’s flight pattern.
(Top) Christopher Pong sports a dinosaur-themed mask during his participation in the Mars 2020 mission’s second trajectory correction maneuver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. PHOTO COURTESY NASA/JPLCALTECH (Above) Pong at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility. PHOTO COURTESY CHRISTOPHER PONG
“Like many kids, I grew up wanting to be an astronaut,” recalls Pong, whose liftoff in life began in Kāneʻohe, where he attended Kapunahala Elementary School. “I would read about Albert Ein- stein and Stephen Hawking. I also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy.
tory that will miss Mars for plan- etary protection reasons.
er, Clinton, who today works as a Boston-based family doctor.
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“Probably in third and fourth grades, I attended Future Flight Hawai‘i, which was a space camp on the Big Island,” he continues. “The first year I went with my dad for a few days and the second year I went alone for a week. We went out on the lava flows, sampled rocks and tested them for life. At the end, we gave a presentation to our families.”
Pong, an alumnus of Punahou School.
“There were such a variety of emotions that I felt that day — ex- haustion from not sleeping well the night before and adrenaline to balance it out; fear that something may go wrong and we could lose the entire mission. Those emo- tions just built and built as VIPs started entering the room and the livestream started,” remembers
Pong explains that as the space- craft cruises from Earth to Mars, it spins like a giant gyroscope. The spacecraft’s solar arrays and antennas are aligned with its spin axis, and therefore, attitude con- trol engineers need to periodically turn the spacecraft to keep them pointed close enough to the Sun and Earth. The spacecraft is also
purposefully launched on a trajec- protective wing of his big broth-
“When I heard the words ‘touchdown confirmed,’ there was just a flood of joy and relief. The high-definition photos and videos of the landing that were down- linked in the following days were literally out of this world.”
Although he is currently work- ing at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Pong’s interplanetary adventure has its beginnings in Hawai‘i.
“He likes to brag about me on Facebook. I was shy as a kid so he would speak for me — and this pattern still continues to this day,” acknowledges the 34-year- old Pong.
Born to Randall Pong and May Akamine, Pong grew up under the