DOVER, Del.-NASA's Mars rover "Curiosity" traveled more than 350 million miles to reach it's destination and a Delaware State University professor in Dover is helping analyze the information the rover is sending back.
Dr. Nouredine Melikechi stayed up all night waiting for the rover to safely land on Mars.
"It's like trying to land from new York to Dover and trying to land on a dime," he said. "It's just incredible in terms of accuracy."
Now that the rover has made it to Mars, Melikechi and two of his students at DSU are waiting to analyze the data "Curiosity" will send back.
They expect what they find on Mars will be able to help with medical research back here on Earth.
"We look for bio-markers for healthcare, for diseases, for cancer," Melikchi said. "The software and the mathematical methods we're developing for mars are, if not similar, are going to teach us a lot about how we look for signs of diseases, in my case, in blood,"
DSU graduate student Angela Lundberg hopes her analysis of the Mars data will help with cancer research.
"The analysis I'm developing for the Mars rover will be able to completely cross over to that research so that's the number one to me, " she said.
