Calgarians working at a tech company are proud to see their work in action as NASA’s Perseverance rover gathers samples from a planet millions of kilometres away.
EVANS’ chief technology officer Matko Papic said the company, which was founded in Calgary in 1980, has been a global player in aviation, public safety and space operations and has focused on designing and equipping control rooms for decades.
He said the company gets involved with the early planning and detailed designs of the space and then designs the consoles specific to customer requirements, they do all the manufacturing and support their customers globally.
Their latest collaboration was on Perseverance, NASA’s rover that landed on Mars earlier this month.
The rover specializes in travelling the planet Mars to look for signs of ancient life and pick up a wide range of core rock and soil samples and store them safely, so they can be returned to earth and studied.
EVANS supplied control room consoles to the company in Texas, and Papic said the employees we thrilled with being a part of the project.
“You know, we as a … Calgary-based company are very fortunate and very proud to … be able to be a part of this program.” Papic said
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“It’s both a sense of pride and a little bit of a sense of relief. But I think it’s mainly … pride that’s just, you know, being involved even in such a small piece.”
Papic told Global News that there are lots of future opportunities and EVANS is excited to continue to be a part of projects like this.
He said that navigating a mission from northeast Calgary when all the equipment is in Houston is not an easy task, but it is very doable.
“I think a big part of that is we’ve been able to develop a very unique and value-added product offering, and I think the fact that we support our customers and every aspect of their operational needs and the fact that we can support our customers globally, Papic said.
“With these specific solutions its really made a difference and its helped evolve EVANS into a global player.”
EVANS involvement in Perseverance was primarily in the control room and all elements were designed and manufactured in Calgary.
“That’s usually where Evans does most of our work is within the control room environment, and it varies by the type of mission. But they’re all control rooms that require continuous monitoring.” Papic said
Papic mentioned that due to high-level requirements, these projects can take quite some time to complete.
“We want to make sure that we’re focusing on capturing all the requirements and making sure that the design is absolutely perfect because the last thing we want is, you know, something that Evans provided to be a hindrance in the overall mission and so we’re very, very diligent to making sure that everything is functioning perfectly before it actually gets commissioned and goes live.” Papic said
The company’s relationship with NASA began decades ago as they began supporting them on some of the space shuttle missions both from a mission and launch control standpoint. EVANS has been involved with some other well-known projects.
“We’ve done projects for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; we’ve done projects for the Hubble Space Telescope, so different programs within NASA,” Papic said.
“And we’ve been very fortunate as an organization that NASA continued to see us as a partner in helping them develop some of these solutions.”
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