[imagesource: Twitter / New Era Newspaper]
It’s a good Wednesday when you find out that there’s another southern African space connection.
There’s Elon Musk, of course, and now we have a particular ridge on a far-off planet.
Remember that helicopter that made history by flying on Mars recently?
Well, Jakob (Japie) van Zyl was part of the team that created this helicopter, formally known as Ingenuity.
The ridge on Mars, from where Perseverance was filming the historical moment that the helicopter took flight, has been named after van Zyl to honour his exceptional contribution to NASA.
It is called the Van Zyl Overlook.
Born in Namibia, van Zyl then came to South Africa to study at the University of Stellenbosch, after which he moved to America and played a crucial role in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for 33 years.
SA People reports that although Van Zyl was an expat for over three decades, he still had connections to home, and liked to encourage youngsters in Namibia and South Africa to become scientists.
Sadly, van Zyl was not around to see his helicopter take flight on Monday.
At the age of 64, van Zyl passed away in August 2020 after suffering a heart attack in California.
He was present for part of the journey, though, managing to see Percy launch, carrying that helicopter to the Red Planet.
Here’s more from NASA:
“Van Zyl joined JPL in 1986 and served in crucial roles at the Lab over a 33-year career, including as director for the Astronomy and Physics Directorate, associate director for project formulation and strategy, and finally director for the Solar System Exploration Directorate.
Those are some impressive titles.
“As leader of solar system exploration at JPL, he oversaw successful operations of such NASA missions as Juno, Dawn, and Cassini, the implementation of the Mars InSight lander and MarCO CubeSats, as well as ongoing development of Europa Clipper, Psyche, and all of JPL’s instruments and Ingenuity.”
It is pure goals to have a ridge on Mars named after you.
Good job, sir – we hope you have an epic view of all this from wherever you are now.
