The young professional talked about her time working at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she performed verification and validation ground tests for Curiosity's arm with the Robotic Manipulators and Deployable Booms group.
"We performed the tests as the robot landed in Mars, back in 2012. Its trip [to Mars] took eight months, and now it is picking up planet samples for scientists to analyze," she indicated.
Searching for alien life
The aerospace engineer explained the rover is searching for signs of past life in the Red Planet to shed light on the possibility of human colonization.
"We cannot send humans [to Mars] unless we are certain [about that]," she pointed out.
In this respect, Silva-Martinez revealed the rover may have found microorganisms, thus confirming possible life signs.
"I am no longer working on the Mars aspect, […]. We are [currently] running tests to see what would happen to future astronauts traveling to Mars," she indicated.
Remarks were made during talks to secondary school students at her former school, Maria de la Merced, as well as at Cusco's High Performance School (COAR).
The engineer also addressed students at San Antonio Abad National University and Cusco's ICPNA English language school.
(END) PHS/MAO/DHT/MVB