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ATA Engineering Receives Motiv Space Systems’ Outstanding Partner Award
ATA was recognized with an Outstanding Partner Award from Motiv Space Systems, Inc., for engineering analysis and testing services ATA performed on the Mars Perseverance rover robotic arm and Mastcam-Z lens assembly
SAN DIEGO, Calif., May 11, 2021 – ATA Engineering (ATA) was recently recognized with an Outstanding Partner Award from Motiv Space Systems, Inc. (Motiv). ATA provided Motiv, who partnered with NASA and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to design and build the robotic arm for the Mars Perseverance rover, with engineering analysis and testing services for the robotic arm and Mastcam-Z lens assembly.
Over a five-year period starting in 2015, more than twenty ATA engineers supported the development of the Perseverance robotic arm and Mastcam-Z lens assembly.
ATA performed linear and nonlinear static, dynamic, and buckling analyses at the system and component levels for the Perseverance robotic arm to write margins against all load cases that the arm will see over its lifetime. ATA supported static proof testing to meet JPL requirements through proof test definition, pretest analysis, and analyst support of the static testing. ATA also performed pretest analysis and test execution of the force limited, response limited random vibration test, including leveraging the Perseverance robotic arm assembly test to meet model correlation requirements.
The Mars Perseverance rover includes Mastcam-Z, a mast-mounted camera system equipped with a zoom function. ATA created a finite element model of the Mastcam-Z primary and secondary structure and performed detailed structural and thermal analysis to ensure that the structure would perform as expected while exposed to challenging environments and operations. Our work included static stress analysis, modal analysis, random analysis, transient shock analysis, and fastener analysis.
In presenting the award to ATA, Mr. Brett Lindenfeld, Vice President of Operations and co-founder of Motiv, complimented the ATA teams on their “flawless execution” of the projects.
Dr. Tricia Sur, ATA Vice President, Business Development, received the award on behalf of ATA and said, “We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with Motiv in support of the Perseverance Rover robotic arm, a critical component of this NASA flagship mission. I am proud of the support that my ATA colleagues provided, and each day we enjoy together the stunning Mastcam-Z images and news of the robotic arm’s successful operations on Mars.”