P2K: What did you do on Pathfinder and what kind of kick did you get out of working on the Pathfinder mission?

Matt Wallace: Oh, man, I had a great time on Pathfinder. I did a lot of different stuff, actually. I started out working on the Sojourner rover. I was in charge of the power subsystems, solar arrays and batteries and power electronics, and then I transitioned over and was part of the ATLO team, surprisingly enough, for the spacecraft, the lander and cruise stage and all that. I worked as a power subsystem operator in the ATLO team and as part of that team I helped get the spacecraft ready, took it down to the Cape, was on the launch team, got to say "go for launch," had a good time.

When I came back from KFC, we transitioned to mission operations, I went back to the rover team, the Sojourner rover team, and became one of the rover operations coordinators, so I was one of two guys who were responsible for coordinating the rover engineering and engineering analysis and sequence development and planning groups as well as interfacing with scientists in the lander engineering team.

So I did that until several months after we landed on Pathfinder. It was just a lot of fun.