NASA’s Insight spacecraft landed on Mars  Nov. 26 after launching on top of an Atlas V 401 rocket May 5.

InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is the first mission dedicated to exploring the deep interior of the Red Planet.

Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu is one of the navigators who rely on NASA’s Deep Space Network to track the spacecraft.

The navigation team, based at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology,  leads the InSight mission.

Dr. Trebi-Ollennu is the product delivery manager for the InSight Mars Mission Instrument Deployment System, and a technical group lead in the Robotic Manipulation & Sampling group at JPL, where he has been since 1999.

His research at JPL focuses on planetary rovers, manipulation, mobile robots (Planetary Outpost), reconfigurable robots and man-machine interaction.

During Dr. Trebi-Ollennu’s 17 year-career at JPL, he has worked on flight projects, mission formulation, and served as a reviewer for NASA Science Mission Directorate technology proposals and NASA Office of Education proposals.

He founded the Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation (ghanarobotics.org) in 2011.