JPL
Careers
Education
Science & Technology
JPL Logo
JPL Logo
Solar System
.

NASA's Curiosity Rover Team Today Features Women

June 26, 2014
Some of the women working on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project, which built and operates the Curiosity Mars rover, gathered for this photo in the Mars Yard used for rover testing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Today (Thursday) is Women's Curiosity Day for the diverse team running NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, with female engineers and scientists doing most of mission's 90-plus roles.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover this week completed its first Martian year -- 687 Earth days -- since landing in August 2012. Each day of the rover working on Mars requires several dozen rover team members completing tasks on Earth.

To celebrate reaching this longevity milestone, which had been set as one of the mission's goals from the start, the Curiosity team planned staffing a special day, with women fulfilling 76 out of 102 operational roles.

"I see this as a chance to illustrate to girls and young women that there's not just a place for them in technical fields, but a wide range of jobs and disciplines that are part of the team needed for a project as exciting as a rover on Mars," said Colette Lohr, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

"There's no practical way any one person could learn all the disciplines needed for operating Curiosity," she said. "It takes a team and we rely on each other."

Disciplines range from soil science to software engineering, from chemistry to cartography, in duties ranging from assessing rover-temperature data freshly arriving from Mars to choosing where to point the rover's cameras. Descriptions of the roles, along with names and locations of the team members filling them today, are part of Curiosity Women's Day information available at:

http://go.usa.gov/9d3x

Lohr's role today is strategic mission manager, which means she is responsible for review and approval of plans being developed and modified during the day for rover activities more than three or four days in the future.

She and most of the other engineers and managers on the team are at JPL in California. Today's team, not atypically, also includes members working in 11 other U.S. states, from Massachusetts to Montana, and four other nations: Canada, France, Russia and Spain. Each of the rover's 10 science instruments has people responsible for evaluating newly received data and planning to get more data. Other scientists participating in operations serve on theme groups that pull together information from multiple instruments and choose priorities for upcoming activities.

Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Joy Crisp of JPL helped organize the special day and will fill the project scientist role, providing scientific leadership in the strategic planning process. She said, "The team has both scientists and engineers, but it's one team working together to accomplish the mission goals."

Each day's rover activities must be planned to fit within budgets of how much time, power and data-downlink capacity are available.

The operational roles fall into categories of tactical, supra-tactical and strategic, which focus, respectively, on the next day's rover activities, the activities two to five days ahead, and planning for weeks or months ahead.

"While some people are focused on today's plan for tomorrow, we need other people to be looking further ahead," Crisp said. "We wouldn't be able to plan complex activities for the rover if we started from scratch each day. We do a lot of work to get a head start on each day."

The operations team for Curiosity is larger than the operations teams for the previous generation of rovers, NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. In an experience similar to Women's Curiosity Day, one day in February 2008, Spirit's tactical operations team of about 30 people was almost entirely women.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

News Media Contact

Guy Webster

818-354-6278

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

2014-205

Related News

Solar System .

NASA’s Magellan Data Reveals Volcanic Activity on Venus

Mars .

Engineers Keep an Eye on Fuel Supply of NASA’s Oldest Mars Orbiter

Solar System .

Study Finds Ocean Currents May Affect Rotation of Europa’s Icy Crust

Mars .

NASA’s Curiosity Views First ‘Sun Rays’ on Mars

Solar System .

Study Finds Venus’ ‘Squishy’ Outer Shell May Be Resurfacing the Planet

Mars .

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Set to Begin Third Year at Jezero Crater

Mars .

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Shows Off Collection of Mars Samples

Solar System .

NASA’s NuSTAR Telescope Reveals Hidden Light Shows on the Sun

Mars .

NASA’s Curiosity Finds Surprise Clues to Mars’ Watery Past

Mars .

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Completes Mars Sample Depot

Explore More

Image .

Ingenuity and Perseverance Make Tracks

Image .

Eumenides Dorsum

Image .

Chaos

Image .

Perseverance Views Drifting Clouds

Image .

Icaria Fossae

Image .

South Polar Ice

Image .

South Polar Ice

Video .

Perseverance's Mastcam-Z Views Ingenuity's 47th Takeoff

Image .

Southern Dunes

Image .

South Polar Ice

About JPL
Who We Are
Executive Council
Directors
Careers
Internships
The JPL Story
JPL Achievements
Documentary Series
Annual Reports
Missions
Current
Past
Future
All
News
All
Earth
Solar System
Stars and Galaxies
Subscribe to JPL News
Galleries
Images
Videos
Audio
Podcasts
Apps
Visions of the Future
Slice of History
Robotics at JPL
Events
Lecture Series
Team Competitions
Speakers Bureau
Calendar
Visit
Public Tours
Virtual Tour
Directions and Maps
Topics
JPL Life
Solar System
Mars
Earth
Climate Change
Exoplanets
Stars and Galaxies
Robotics
More
Asteroid Watch
NASA's Eyes Visualizations
Universe - Internal Newsletter
Social Media
Get the Latest from JPL
Follow Us

JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech.

More from JPL
Careers Education Science & Technology Acquisitions JPL Store
Careers
Education
Science & Technology
Acquisitions
JPL Store
Related NASA Sites
Basics of Spaceflight
Climate Kids
Earth / Global Climate Change
Exoplanet Exploration
Mars Exploration
Solar System Exploration
Space Place
NASA's Eyes Visualization Project
Voyager Interstellar Mission
NASA
Caltech
Privacy
Image Policy
FAQ
Feedback
Site Managers: Veronica McGregor, Randal Jackson
Site Editors: Tony Greicius, Naomi Hartono
CL#: 21-0018