/ Darian Dixon in front of a Curiosity rover model, which landed on Mars in 2012. He was part of the team that put together the Curiosity "gigapixel" — the highest-resolution picture ever taken on any exoplanetary body. On February 18, the Perseverance rover landed on Mars after traveling eight months through space. This is NASA’s first big return to the red planet since Curiosity landed there in 2011. One Milwaukee native and UW-Milwaukee alumni has been fortunate enough to work on both rover missions. Darian Dixon is a mission operations specialist at Malin Space Science Systems for the Perseverance rover — otherwise known as a Mars rover operator. His job includes instructing some of the cameras on the rover to capture stills so that scientists can continue to learn more about the planet's atmosphere, landscape and soils.