HOTLINE: OM Group-owned company powers Mars landing

More metals-related space news this week as EaglePicher Technologies, owned by specialty materials company OM Group, helped to power the landing of Nasa’s Curiosity rover in a crater on Mars.

More metals-related space news this week as EaglePicher Technologies, owned by specialty materials company OM Group, helped to power the landing of Nasa’s Curiosity rover in a crater on Mars.

Curiosity landed on the red planet on August 6 in a $2.5 billion salute to the power of modern technology and the desire of mankind to find out whether little green men really do exist.

OM Group bought the defence battery producer in 2009 for $172 million. EaglePicher has been supplying batteries to the space programme for several decades.

This time around, EaglePicher supplied four specially designed thermal batteries for the Mars mission, which has been beaming back pictures from the planet’s surface.

No little green men had been photographed at the time of going to press.

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