That’s why he hired two pilots in August 2016 to plunge a helicopter toward the ground while he tested what a Venus probe might be able to photograph. Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the principal investigator on a proposed mission to Venus that would drop a probe through its atmosphere. Although his interests were hardly terrestrial. And each time, Garvin pointed a camera toward the ground through the open door in an attempt to measure the topography of a rock quarry below-from massive boulders to smooth sheets of sand. The helicopter dropped 10 times that day. Then, a mere six meters above the ground, the ride got even wilder when the pilots pulled the aircraft out of the fall and climbed skywards, only to fall again. Nor did the realization that his seat belt wasn’t fully fastened-a moment that sent his heart rate skyrocketing. Although this was all according to plan, that didn’t settle James Garvin’s nerves. It dropped by more than 1,500 meters over Maryland, twisting slightly as the ground grew rapidly closer.
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