Winfield native Chris Kuhl is chief engineer of the Mars Science Laboratory's Entry Descent and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI) Program. The tools, located on the Curiosity rover capsule's heat shield, allowed Kuhl to monitor atmospheric conditions during Sunday's descent through the Martian atmosphere from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Valencia, Calif.

The heat shield that protected NASA's Curiosity rover and its supporting hardware -- sky crane, the space capsule nose cone and parachute -- falls toward the Martian surface after being ejected from the spacecraft during Sunday's successful landing on the red planet.