Page 4 - Hawaii Island MidWeek - April 14, 2021

4 HAWAI‘I ISLAND MIDWEEK APRIL 14, 2021
“Probably in third and fourth grades, I attended Future Flight Hawai‘i, which was a space camp on the Big Island,” he continues. “The first year I went with my dad for a few days and the second year I went alone for a week. We went out on the lava flows, sampled rocks and tested them for life. At the end, we gave a presentation to our families.”
Pong, an alumnus of Punahou School.
also purposefully launched on a trajec- tory that will miss Mars for planetary protection reasons.
“When I heard the words ‘touchdown confirmed,’ there was just a flood of joy and relief. The high-definition photos and videos of the landing that were down- linked in the following days were literally out of this world.”
(Top) Christopher Pong sports a dinosaur-themed mask during his participation in the Mars 2020 mission’s second trajectory correction maneuver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. PHOTO COURTESY NASA/JPLCALTECH (Above) Pong at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility. PHOTO COURTESY CHRISTOPHER PONG
Ever since he was young, Christopher Pong has made it a point to keep his eyes fixed on the skies and beyond.
Fast-forward to Feb. 18 of this year, and Pong’s job as a guidance and control engineer for NASA’s successful Perseverance rover landing on Mars has become the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
Specifically, Pong served as an attitude control engineer on the project. In that role, he helped esti- mate the attitude, or orientation, of the spacecraft using a sun sensor and star scanner, and assisted in firing the thrusters to alter Perse- verance’s flight pattern.
Although he is
currently working at
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, Pong’s interplanetary adven-
ture has its beginnings in Hawai‘i.
the zip line from our tree house. I played soccer and was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout. It was a very happy time in my life.”
“Like many kids, I grew up wanting to be an astronaut,” re- calls Pong, whose liftoff in life began in Kāneʻohe, where he at- tended Kapunahala Elementary School. “I would read about Al- bert Einstein and Stephen Hawk- ing. I also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy.
“He likes to brag about me on Facebook. I was shy as a kid so he would speak for me — and this pat- tern still continues to this day,” ac- knowledges the 34-year-old Pong.
“Needless to say, that often stopped that conversation,” Pong declares. “But we did get pretty cool toys like K’NEX, Capsela or LEGO Mindstorms, which led to
“There were such a variety of emotions that I felt that day — ex- haustion from not sleeping well the night before and adrenaline to balance it out; fear that something may go wrong and we could lose the entire mission. Those emo- tions just built and built as VIPs started entering the room and the livestream started,” remembers
Pong explains that as the space- craft cruises from Earth to Mars, it spins like a giant gyroscope. The spacecraft’s solar arrays and antennas are aligned with its spin axis, and therefore, attitude control engineers need to period- ically turn the spacecraft to keep them pointed close enough to the Sun and Earth. The spacecraft is
Born to Randall Pong and May Akamine, Pong grew up under the protective wing of his big broth- er, Clinton, who today works as a Boston-based family doctor.
Within the home, education was stressed by their parents. Whenever they would ask for a toy, their mom would respond with a simple question: “What’s the toy’s educational value?”
In describing his childhood, Pong says, “My brother and I would explore the neighborhood, race down our cul-de-sac in our wooden go-kart, or swing down
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