Julie Wertz Chen ’00, SM ’02, PhD ’06 and her husband Al Chen ’00, SM ’02 share more than a love of Hootie and the Blowfish, a band they went to on their first date during their junior year at MIT. The pair met in an introductory aerospace course their first year and became part of an inseparable group of study pals for many Aerospace Engineering Course 16 classes soon thereafter. After marrying in 2003 at a star-themed wedding, the Chens eventually both landed jobs at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). But they had an agreement. “I used to always tease him, ‘you can have Mars, and I’ll have the rest of the Universe,’ explains Julie. “And that was our deal for a long time.” Al kept up his end of the bargain, working for 10 years on the successful Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity Rover, which landed on Mars in August of 2012. But when Julie was offered a position to work on entry and descent landing (EDL) for Mars InSight which landed in 2018, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. The couple ended up enjoying being part of the same EDL community and talking about technical issues in detail. On InSight’s landing day, Julie sat at the same console that Al had sat six years earlier. “The last two missions that landed on Mars were Curiosity and InSight. And for those two missions, Al was on that console for one, and I was on that console for the other…It’s nice to be married to someone that you have a lot in common with.” Pictured: Al and Julie on a recent visit to MIT . . . . . . #ValentinesDay #MITcouples #MIT #AroundMIT #NASA #MarsInsight #Mars #JPL #EDL @MITpics