 and lift off as the countdown to Mars continues the perseverance of humanity launching the next generation of robotic explorers to the red planet. On the rover team we're actually doing a lot of work right now to try to prepare for landing because we're under a lot of pressure to do a lot with this rover. We're trying to make a plan for where we're going to go in the crater, what we think we want to sample and where we want to go look for signs of ancient life as well as understand other geological processes on Mars. Looking at the mineralogy and geochemistry in the source regions might help shed light on that as well. So the way we run the rover is you know we basically have a huge all-day meeting with the entire science team and put together a big plan for what the rover is going to do on the next day and so that's a great opportunity for both you know me and my students to get involved with planning what the rover does day to day. I'm from Portland, Oregon. I grew up in the forest of the northwest with volcanoes all around so that's how I got interested in geology. When I was a little girl I loved space, I loved rocks, I was always collecting rocks but you know when I was a little girl we didn't have rovers on Mars yet. I actually didn't know that I wanted to work with NASA and work in space until after I was in college. I majored in physics which I love because physics explains the world around us in a really fundamental way but when I started thinking about what I wanted to do for my career you know physics what was really interesting it didn't really capture my imagination quite as much as space and geology both and geology I absolutely love because it explains how the world around us came to be and I didn't really get into planetary science until the Mars exploration rovers landed in 2003 and just seeing those images come back from the surface was just absolutely incredible and that's what inspired me to pursue planetary science. A place for going on Mars no human eyes have ever seen before and we'll be able to see them through robot eyes it's really the next best thing to going there yourself and exploring a new planet as an astronaut. I'm really excited to explore a new place on Mars and learn totally new things about the origin of our solar system in Mars.