Rochester on Mars: Local Companies Featured on NASA’s Rover

One of our members, Optimax System’s Inc., supplied lenses for a number of systems located on NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which just made national headlines when it landed on Mars on February 18th, 2021.

These systems include NavCams, HazCams, CacheCam, MastCam, and SHERLOC. Most of these systems are just for capturing audio and visual, but SHERLOC is an ultraviolet sensing unit.

Joseph Spillman, Director of Marketing for Optimax, said they made most of the lenses back in 2017 and “almost all of the images you see coming from Mars, coming from this rover, are going to be coming from lenses made in Rochester.”

This isn’t the first NASA project that Optimax has contributed to, however. They’ve also supplied lenses for the Mercury Messenger, the International Space Station, the Lunar Reconnaissance, as well as the other Mars rovers, Curiosity, Spirit, and Opportunity.

To read the full article, please visit Rochester on Mars: Local companies featured on NASA’s rover | RochesterFirst