Gregory Galgana Villar III: From curious to Curiosity

As the Curiosity rover made its historic descent on Mars on Sunday, August 5 (Monday, August 6 in Manila), scientists, engineers, and space buffs around the world waited with bated breath to see if the landing would be successful.

There were hundreds of scientists and engineers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) alone, the mission control for Curiosity. Among them was a Filipino-American, Gregory Galgana Villar III, a 25-year-old engineer, part of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission.

"The environment [at the control room] was very tense, everyone was very anxious...we were getting more and more excited," he recalled.

He was at the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) control room – a room different from the one shown to the public on NASA's livestream – when the historic moment happened.

When touchdown on Mars was confirmed at 5:14 UTC (10:14 pm PDT), there was jubilation throughout the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"We all just jumped with joy. Everyone was hugging each other, everyone was crying, big smiles. There's this huge sense of relief," he said.

The historic event was Villar’s first rover mission – not too shabby for a Filipino-American curious about science and engineering, now one of the youngest engineers at the JPL.

California to Baguio and back

Born and raised in Long Beach, California to Filipino parents, he attended high school at the St Louis University Laboratory High School in Baguio City. He then went back to California, and took up Physics at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in Pomona.

During his junior year at Cal Poly Pomona, he was awarded a scholarship under the NASA's Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology (MUST) program, which included an internship at the JPL.

As an intern, he conducted research in astrophysics and planetary science. He eventually got hired as an employee in June 2010, where he first did cost models for future missions.

He has been with the MSL team since January 2011 as an Operations Systems Engineer. His tasks included conducting training exercises for the flight team, which involved simulation of the mission's different phases.

"The objective was to ensure that all of the tools, procedures, processes and interactions between the teams functioned correctly," he told Rappler in an interview Thursday, August 9 (Wednesday, August 8, in California).

'Unbelievable sequence of events'

The successful landing of the rover caused a sigh of relief and a source of joy for the MSL team, including Villar.

"It's just an unbelievable sequence of events – I still can't believe it worked! And it's a really big project that will contribute a lot," he said.

The rover is an important step in helping us understand whether the Red Planet has, or can, support microbial life.

"Understanding whether life exists outside of our planet is a very interesting topic and since Mars is the closest planet to Earth, it is logical we start looking there," he said.

Aside from that, the 25-year-old engineer said the high-tech rover alone should pique the interest of people, from its cameras, arms, scientific payloads, and its own laser. "Did you see the crazy landing system? Come on, how cool is that?"-Rappler (August 09, 2012 10:54PM)