Dr. Steve Squyres

Steven W. Squyres (born 1957) is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His research area is in planetary sciences, with a focus on large solid bodies in the solar system such as the terrestrial planets and the moons of the Jovian planets. Squyres is principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission (MER). He is the recipient of the 2004 Carl Sagan Memorial Award and the 2009 Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Communication in Planetary Science. He is the brother of Academy Award-nominated film editor Tim Squyres.

Education

Squyres was raised in the town of Wenonah in southern New Jersey.^[1]

Squyres attended Gateway Regional High School in Woodbury Heights, New Jersey.^[2] He received his B.S. in Geology in 1978, his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1981 (where he was a student of Carl Sagan), and then spent five years as a postdoctoral associate and research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center before returning to Cornell as a faculty member. He received the H. C. Urey Prize from the Planetary Division of the American Astronomical Society in 1987. In 2007, he was awarded the prestigious Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science[1] by the Franklin Institute.

NASA

Dr. Steve Squyres reacts to the images of Spirit leaving its lander.

Squyres has participated in many of NASA's planetary exploration missions. From 1978 to 1981 he was an associate of the Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn, participating in analysis of imaging data. He subsequently worked as a radar investigator on the Magellan mission to Venus, and with the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission. Along with his work on MER, he is also a co-investigator on the 2003 Mars Express and 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions, a member of the Gamma-Ray Spectrometer Flight Investigation Team for the Mars Odyssey mission, and a member of the imaging team for the Cassini to Saturn. Squyres recently served as Chair of the NASA Space Science Advisory Committee and as a member of the NASA Advisory Council.

ABC News featured Squyres as its Person of the Week for January 9, 2004, and World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings said he "has gotten us all excited." ^[3] Squyres was also given the 2005 Wired Rave Award for science by Wired for overseeing the creation of Spirit and Opportunity that have, at the time, lasted thirteen times longer than expected (1174 vs. 90 martian days). ^[4]

He has written a book called Roving Mars : Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet (published August 2005; ISBN 1-4013-0149-5), and appeared on the June 7, 2006 episode of The Colbert Report to discuss it, Mars, and MER. The Disney IMAX documentary film Roving Mars was made from the book.

He was interviewed on 60 Minutes: "The Next Giant Leap For Mankind - 60 Minutes Reports On NASA's Plans To Return Men To The Moon In Preparation For A Manned Flight To Mars" on Sunday, April 6, 2008.^[5]

Mars Science Laboratory

Squyres has said in an interview that he will not be the principal investigator for the Mars Science Laboratory, due to launch in 2011, as he did not want to be away from his family again for a long period (as happened during the Mars Exploration Rover Mission). [2]

References

External links

• Cornell Astronomy Dept.
• Scientific American: Father of Spirit and Opportunity With the success of twin rovers on the Red Planet, Steven W. Squyres and his team are showing how to conduct robotic missions—and setting the stage for human exploration
• Mars Exploration Rovers
• Squyres bio at Zip Code Mars page
• Mars Exploration Rovers Mission Update blog
• Squyres receives Benjamin Franklin Medal for Mars Rover leadership; meanwhile, rovers keep proving their mettle, Cornell Chronicle (20 March 2007)
• Video of Steve Squyres discussing the Spirit and Opportunity missions