You always hope for a boring mission. That internship led to a job following his graduation from the aeronautics and astronautics program in 1992. While missions to Mars still capture the nation's attention, tons of machinery are put into orbit each year without much notice. These satellites orbit our planet at the same speed that Earth turns, so they appear to be at a fixed point in space. But for Mr. Tompkins and the other engineers planning and designing these missions, each launch holds as much excitement as the Mars landing did for the rest of us.
Bad things happen all the time.
But the true test comes when they launch the spacecraft, position it into orbit and spend a few weeks putting it through test maneuvers. If something goes wrong, they attempt to guide the spacecraft from their control room on Earth. Mr. Tompkins told an anecdote of one spacecraft they launched but then couldn't get into orbit. In terms of operation, you'd almost rather have the spacecraft explode. It took weeks of maneuvering to get it into the targeted orbit.