“I always just followed my curiosity,” Keith Comeaux said.
Ironically enough, his curiosity led him to Curiosity. Comeaux, a 1989 LSU graduate, works at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where he’s been instrumental in the past two Mars rover missions.
The Baton Rouge native served as the flight director for Curiosity’s 2012 entry, descent and landing on Mars.
As the Mars 2020 mission manager, Comeaux led the team through the launch, cruise, approach, entry, descent and landing of the Perseverance Rover, which touched down successfully on the red planet on Feb. 18.
Since then, Comeaux has been working on “Mars time” to ensure safe surface operations.
“It sounds pretty romantic, working on another planet,” Comeaux said. “But, you know until very recently, it felt just like a normal job. There’s a lot of things that need to get done. You go into work. You work with your teammates. You have meetings. You do email…but every now and then, you actually stop, and you think about what it is you’re working on.”
Perseverance is step one in a long-term project with the end goal of bringing rocks from Mars back to Earth. The rover is equipped with a sample caching system, composed of a coring drill to take the rock samples and a system that seals the samples into airtight titanium tubes.
In assembly-line style, Perseverance will leave the tubes on Mars’ surface for a future project to fetch. This future project will place the sample tubes into a rocket, which will blast off and orbit Mars. Then, a third mission will fly into orbit around Mars to pick up those samples to finally bring them back to Earth.
“It’s quite the choreography,” Comeaux said.
And the dance is a long one. The earliest the two return missions would be launched is 2026, but it could be as late as 2028. The red planet’s rocks have never graced the Earth’s surface, making this mission the starting step of another monumental first for NASA.
“We’re making discoveries and rewriting the history books, the textbooks on Mars,” Comeaux said.
The idea has been on the books at NASA for years, but the real steps to put it into motion began after Curiosity.
“Pretty much the moment that we landed Curiosity,” Comeaux said. “That was the moment that made Perseverance possible. A lot of the engineering designs that we had for Curiosity were used directly on Perseverance. In fact, to most people, they will look identical.”
However, a few important improvements were implemented.
For instance, Perseverance’s Lander Vision System, which analyzed the rover’s projected landing site and actively compared it to a map of safe landing zones. The computer itself selected the safest spot to land amid the cliffs, rocks and gullies of Jezero Crater, a long-awaited landing site that had always been deemed “too dangerous” before.
Under its belly, similar to the spare tire on an SUV, Perseverance houses Ingenuity, a helicopter. When the helicopter is deployed in the coming weeks, it will be the first attempt to conduct powered flight on another planet.
Another notable addition to Perseverance were the EDL cameras that recorded every moment of the landing frame-by-frame. But before the cameras could capture those iconic images, the 10-foot long, nine-foot wide, 2,260-pound rover had to be assembled.
Titanium and aluminum parts came to the Jet Propulsion Lab as assembly units from across the world. After a testing period, Perseverance was shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch.
“And then the pandemic hit,” Comeaux said. “And so, we were very concerned that the pandemic was going to slow us down, and we were going to miss our launch vehicle. Throughout the entire project that was the first time that we actually thought, ‘hey, you know, are we going to make it?’”
The launch window to effectively get to Mars only opens up for three to four weeks every 26 months. And COVID-19 added a whole new level of stress on top of that. Comeaux and his team had to transition working from home. And like many others, Comeaux said the transition was hard.
“That was one of the more stressful times was making that transition, and then figuring out how do you do web meetings?” Comeaux said. “And how do you recreate the magic that happens when you’re all in an office area together?”
Fortunately, despite the obstacles and having only one in-person mission rehearsal, Perseverance launched successfully on the first attempt on July 30, 2020.
“You’re not prepared for the emotions that come over you,” Comeaux said. “We’ve put so much into this and spent a good chunk of our careers working on this, and there’s been so many struggles over the years. Doing something that’s never been done before, that final moment when it all comes together and works, it’s a pretty big emotional release.”
“I mean, people are crying, people are jumping up and down and fist pumping the air and everything.”
Although growing up he dreamed of being a pilot or astronaut, Comeaux said he never could have imagined that one day he would be putting rovers on Mars. Looking back at the trajectory of his career, Comeaux said he simply followed his interests and that prepared him for the out of this world opportunities that came.
“I wouldn’t trade it,” Comeaux said. “I think, ultimately, when you are genuinely interested in something, and passionate about it, you embrace it. And get to know it and be the best that you can at it. I think that’s what leads to success and happiness.”
Because if you have the Spirit and take every Opportunity to follow your Curiosity, then as the rover’s official Twitter said, “Perseverance will get you anywhere.”

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Courtesy of Keith Comeaux

Keith Comeaux