Countdown to Launch

April 21, 2020

Ian Clark walks past mission countdown clocks in the Perseverance offices at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The Lab instituted a suite of safe@work procedures — based on the guidance of occupational safety medical personnel — to ensure those working at JPL are social distancing, wearing protective equipment and have ready access to hand sanitizer and other cleaning supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. Clark is one of a small subset of project personnel whose mission-essential job required physical access to the facility. He was on-Lab to supervise the assembly and cleaning of the sample tubes that will hold Martian sediment and rock for return to Earth on a future mission.