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Tavis: Ed Tunstel is the senior robotics engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL for short. Born in Harlem, he went on to college at Howard University, the Bison, where he was recruited by JPL while still a student there. He is now at JPL, of course, and was part of the extraordinary team behind the Mars rover. Two years after the rover landed on the red planet, it is performing beyond everyone's wildest expectations. Dr. Tunstel, nice to have you on the program.

Dr. Edward Tunstel: It's a pleasure to be here, Tavis.

Tavis: I wanted to have you on because you are a part of what I refer to as living history. The fact that you are at JPL making this kind of living history is important for me and for those of us who are proud of you. So I'm glad to have you on the program.

Tunstel: It's a pleasure. What I do is wonderful, it's great, it's fun. I'm sure that kids would want to get into it. And so, I'm always glad to be able to talk about it.

Tavis: All right, so tell me, as a kid, why you wanted to get into this. What turned you on as a kid about math and science?

Tunstel: Well, interestingly, it was art.

Tavis: It was art? Wow.

Tunstel: Yes, it was art. I actually did a lot of drawing when I was young. And drawing led to wanting to be involved in figuring out how things worked. I wanted to combine art with the way things worked. Once I got into taking things apart and putting things back together as well as drawing, I thought about well, what is there something I can do as an adult that combines these things.

It turned out that when I'd learned that there was such a profession as engineering, and learned that there was something called mechanical engineering, and robotics in particular, I found that to be sort of a combination of art that moved. A combination of putting together artistic things that could actually work together, mechanically, electrically, and so on. And it was sort of a plethora of things for me to get into, as far as ideas.

Tavis: Yeah, see, my mom should feel really bad right now. She's watching this program. Because when I was a kid and I would take things apart, I got beat for that.

Tunstel: Okay, okay.

Tavis: Why'd you break my - ? (laugh)

Tunstel: Well, I'm not so sure I escaped that. (laugh)

Tavis: Yeah. (laugh) I used to get in trouble for breaking stuff apart. Of course, in my case, I couldn't put it back together. So maybe that had something to do with it.

Tunstel: Okay. That could be it.

Tavis: Yeah. (laugh) That could be part of it. So tell me how one navigates his way from Harlem to even thinking that he wants to work for a place like JPL.

Tunstel: Yeah. Well, primarily, I concentrated in school to do well. I did that, in fact. And really, that sort of opens doors for you. When I got through high school, I was still interested in doing math and science. I was quite good at it. And it wasn't until about the junior year of high school when I had a guidance counselor that talked about engineering. That same year, I wanted to be an architect, in fact. Due to the artistic background.

And I went to a seminar in New York. The New York Academy of Sciences, where there were architects and engineers talking on a panel about their careers to young people like myself at the time. And I was more impressed with what the engineers said that they did day to day. And that sort of shifted gears for me. And so, when I applied to Howard University, I majored in mechanical engineering. And here I am now.

Tavis: I wonder whether or not, and I know you talk to kids all the time. I have heard stories of you giving your email out to any kid, anywhere in America who asks for it. I've heard stories of kids literally, on a daily basis, sending you emails, asking you for your help on their homework.

Tunstel: This is true. This is true.

Tavis: And you respond to these emails, 'cause you love giving your email out to kids, and you love empowering kids, as somebody empowered you. I raise that only because I wonder, Doc, whether or not you think that we'd have more kids of color pursuing these fields of math and engineering and science and the like if they had people encouraging them to do so.

Because a lot of what we hear is that, a lot of what I believe, quite frankly, is that we receive low performance from kids because we don't have higher expectations of them. Ain't nobody pushing them to go to honors classes. Nobody's pushing them to do well, to consider things that might be out of the realm of sports or entertainment.

Tunstel: Right. Most definitely. I think it's very important. When I was growing up, I realized, and I still realize now, that a key is exposure. A lot of the kids are not exposed to the fact that there are these things to do. And opening up myself to talk to them is not only for an academic standpoint, to try to kind of help them along, but to show them that somebody's, who looks like them, who's been through some of the things they've gone through, who have come from environments like them, the inner city of maybe a big city.

Or maybe something else similar, something else in common. I share my past experiences with them. But it's important for them to understand that going through what they're going through and having perhaps not the best resources around them is not a deterrent to doing these types of things. But I think it initially starts with exposure.

They need to know that these types of careers are available. They need to know what it takes to get there. So once you tell them that they're available, they still have no clue how to get from point A to point B. And so that, in large part, is what I do by interacting with them as much as I do. As I try to tell them, well, this is what I did, this is what a friend of mine or a colleague did. And these are the various ways you can get from point A to point B. But the main thing is to buckle down and do well in school first.

Tavis: Yeah, well, you got from A to B to C. A being Harlem, B being Howard, C being JPL. Let me fast forward now to your time at JPL. This rover, as I mentioned earlier, this was supposed to be like a 90 day mission, and you all did your work so well that this rover is still sending back amazing photos and research data. So tell me how surprised or impressed or how, the kind of expectancy that you all had that this project could, in fact, yield benefits beyond 90 days.

Tunstel: Well, initially, we knew. We do, in a sense, design our systems very well to make sure that they survive the environments we're sending them to. So while our mission was supposed to be about 90 days, we knew that the systems themselves could last a bit longer. But optimistically, we were thinking more in the order of into the summer of 2004.

Where the mission should have ended in about April. We thought, well, yeah, realistically, they could probably last through the summer. And so we went into an extended mission at that time, and we operated the vehicles through the summer. And before you know it, well, the Martian winter is coming, and they're still working.

Well, maybe they won't survive the Martian winter. And all these various opportunities for them to fail were coming to mind. But we're still here. And so, we did have help from Mother Nature, if you will. At different times on the locations where is they are on Mars, the wind has blown off the dust from their solar panels, which is really their primary source of energy.

And that sort of gives them a renewed life, if you will. Some of the components are starting to fail or degrade or show their age, but yet we're being clever on the ground here on Earth, trying to figure out ways to get the most bang for our buck here.

Tavis: Yeah. How does it feel? I'm just trying to - we all, I think, want to feel a sense of accomplishment. We all want to be appreciated for whatever it is in life that we're trying to do. How must it feel to be part of a team like this, where your expectations have been met and you've moved beyond that, and you are in fact, as I said earlier, making history here?

Tunstel: Yeah, yeah.

Tavis: How's that feel?

Tunstel: It's spectacular. It's spectacular. Many of us in my field and similar fields, we work towards this. Some of us never achieve it. We work for years on a mission like this, and oftentimes, the mission may not succeed. And that's years of work not so much down the drain, but it's an experience that you go through where you're ultimately working towards the big payoff, kind of like the Super Bowl, if you will.

Where everyone's trying to get to it. A lot of people are doing a similar job, but only a few get to it. Well, we've gotten to the Super Bowl on this mission, and we're absolutely delighted about it. We're getting as much science as we can out of this mission. And yet, some of us who have actually dug in and done a lot of work on this mission are now working on the next one. And so the cycle continues, but you don't always get the great payoff. But we're enjoying this one.

Tavis: Okay, so I'm not asking you for to reveal any JPL top secrets, but can you talk about what you're working on? What are you working on now? Can you talk about that?

Tunstel: Oh yeah, certainly, certainly. Well, actually, I'm still operating the vehicles.

Tavis: You're still on this project, okay.

Tunstel: Yeah, this is part of my time. And I'm also working on some research towards a future capability, where we have a similar vehicle like this that can use different types of sensors on Mars to actually do life detection experiments. Looking for perhaps past signs of life that may have been on Mars. And if they're present there now, looking for those, as well.

And so, we're looking at new ways to do that. New science instruments, and new mobility capabilities. How to make these vehicles move around in order to support those instruments.

Tavis: As a scientist, do you ever allow yourself to think about whether or not you personally believe that there was or is life on a place like Mars? Or are you just concentrated so much on the facts, on the science, on the data, that you don't allow yourself to speculate about those things? Or again, is it the speculation of something like that that keeps you going every day, working the way you do? Which one is it?

Tunstel: It comes and goes.

Tavis: Comes and goes?

Tunstel: It comes and goes. For me, most of my time is spent really thinking about the technical details. How can we make the systems that we need to do what we need to do? But when you get on a mission like this and you actually operate it, and you're one of the people in the seat in front of a computer screen where those first images come back, and after the rover's driven a long distance and you see new images, again, a place no one on Earth has ever seen up close, you start to wonder.

You start to see a lot of similarities between that place and this place. And you start to ask your questions. Well, why in the world would it not have been possible for life to have developed there? And so yeah, sometimes it comes face to face with you, and you start to wonder. But most of the time I'm thinking about the technical aspects.

Tavis: Yeah. Let me close with this. I'm in a field, radio, television, where every day, it's about immediate gratification. We put together a show, we have a concept for a show, we say why don't we get Ed Tunstel? We call you, we find your availability, you come on, we have a great conversation. Hopefully, the next day, we check the ratings, see how the show did, and we're on to the next show.

But it's immediate gratification. It's right here, it's right now. You're in a field where you work on stuff that's years down the road. You're planning stuff years, sometimes decades out. To your earlier point, sometimes you may get there, sometimes you may not get there. Sometimes the mission succeeds, sometimes the mission fails.

How do you process that kind of lifestyle, that kind of work environment, that kind of mission every day, where you know you may or may not get there? It may or may not work.

Tunstel: Right, yeah. It's not difficult. Because in what we do, many times what we're doing is things that no one has ever done before. And so, it takes time to even figure out how to solve the problems. And so, if you're an engineer like myself who really - that's what you get out of the whole thing, is being able to figure things out.

Being able to solve problems. Being presented with challenges that everyone else wants to turn down. And you want to go after it, because you're thinking I can figure that out. I can solve that problem. That's where we spend our time, and that happens over years. And so, we don't really think about it that much.

As for things that actually may or may not go into space or may fail in the process of trying to do so, when we develop those systems to the point that we get them to before something catastrophic may happen, we've actually learned a whole lot. And in fact, a whole lot that actually goes into the next project. And so, it's really not time wasted at all. It's good time invested.

Tavis: Yeah. Well, speaking of figuring things out, I have figured out I ain't no rocket scientist. But thankfully, (laugh) Ed Tunstel is, and all the good people at JPL are doing work that will empower and enhance our lives for decades to come. Ed, nice to have you on the program.

Tunstel: It's been my pleasure.

Tavis: Thank you, Dr. Tunstel. Up next on this program, legendary composer John Williams. Stay with us.