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John Beck Hofmann (born March 27, 1969) is an American director, cinematographer, composer and actor. He is sometimes credited as John Beck.
John Beck-Hofmann was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and moved to Pasadena, California in 1991. He currently lives in Hollywood, California.
In addition to his cinematic contributions for multiple television programs on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Discovery Channel, Science Channel and National Geographic,[ citation needed ] he has served as stage manager for Geraldo Rivera from 1999 - 2003 for both CNBC and Fox networks as well as for other CNBC/FOX hosts such as Chris Matthews and Greta Van Susteren.[ citation needed ]
He currently serves as a director of photography for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. His work has appeared in the IMAX feature film Roving Mars , James Cameron's "Aliens of the Deep", and NOVA's "Mars: Dead or Alive?" & "Welcome to Mars".
His more recent cinematography work can be seen in the National Geographic program "Five Years on Mars", which won an Emmy in 2009 for outstanding science and technology programming.[ citation needed ] His 1999 documentary on the Mars Pathfinder Mission, "The Pathfinders", won a Gold Plaque award at the Chicago International Film Festival [ citation needed ] by Intercom.
Beck-Hofmann is currently producing and directing several documentaries for NASA/JPL. His current video series project called "The Martians", is a web series, following people from around the world, who work on activities related to our journey to Mars. "The Martians" can be seen at: The Martians. Hofmann has also published a number of videos in his Youtube page, including "7 Minutes of Terror", which describes the atmospheric entry, descent and landing of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, scheduled for August 2012, and features several engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory involved in the MSL project.
Beck-Hofmann's dramatic television work [1] includes conspiracy thriller Tyranny, which plays on Koldcast and Tyranny.tv. [2] Tyranny was accepted as part of the official selection of the Geneva International Film Festival in 2010. Tyranny also received four [3] nominations for: sound design, soundtrack, best looking show and best thriller.
Beck-Hofmann produced controversial conspiracy documentary "Maidan massacre" (2014) about the protests in Ukraine, Euromaidan.
Beck-Hofmann has played in several bands: SnoGlobe (1994–1996) and Terminal-3 (1999–2001). He has also created music used in multiple television shows, such as FX's "Nip/Tuck", MTV's "The Real World", Travel Channel's "Eye of the Beholder" and multiple NASA documentaries. He composed the original score for the ongoing conspiracy thriller Tyranny the Series.
Beck-Hofmann currently lives in Hollywood, California.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center in La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and administered and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and a thermal imager to detect evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet's geology and radiation environment. The data Odyssey obtains is intended to help answer the question of whether life once existed on Mars and create a risk-assessment of the radiation that future astronauts on Mars might experience. It also acts as a relay for communications between the Curiosity rover, and previously the Mars Exploration Rovers and Phoenix lander, to Earth. The mission was named as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, evoking the name of his and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Geoffrey Alan Landis is an American aerospace engineer and author, working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on planetary exploration, interstellar propulsion, solar power and photovoltaics. He holds nine patents, primarily in the field of improvements to solar cells and photovoltaic devices and has given presentations and commentary on the possibilities for interstellar travel and construction of bases on the Moon, Mars, and Venus.
Mars Pathfinder is an American robotic spacecraft that landed a base station with a roving probe on Mars in 1997. It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight, 10.6 kg (23 lb) wheeled robotic Mars rover named Sojourner, the first rover to operate outside the Earth–Moon system.
A Mars rover is a remote-controlled motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. A more recent development is the Mars helicopter.
The planet Mars has been explored remotely by spacecraft. Probes sent from Earth, beginning in the late 20th century, have yielded a large increase in knowledge about the Martian system, focused primarily on understanding its geology and habitability potential. Engineering interplanetary journeys is complicated and the exploration of Mars has experienced a high failure rate, especially the early attempts. Roughly sixty percent of all spacecraft destined for Mars failed before completing their missions, with some failing before their observations could even begin. Some missions have been met with unexpected success, such as the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which operated for years beyond their specification.
Phoenix was an uncrewed space probe that landed on the surface of Mars on May 25, 2008, and operated until November 2, 2008. Phoenix was operational on Mars for 157 sols. Its instruments were used to assess the local habitability and to research the history of water on Mars. The mission was part of the Mars Scout Program; its total cost was $420 million, including the cost of launch.
Bryan Lewis Allen is an American self-taught hang glider pilot and bicyclist. He achieved fame when he piloted the two aircraft that won the first two Kremer prizes for human-powered flight: the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross. He later set world distance and duration records in a small pedal-powered blimp named "White Dwarf."
The Astrobiology Field Laboratory (AFL) was a proposed NASA rover that would have conducted a search for life on Mars. This proposed mission, which was not funded, would have landed a rover on Mars in 2016 and explore a site for habitat. Examples of such sites are an active or extinct hydrothermal deposit, a dry lake or a specific polar site.
Jezero is a crater on Mars in the Syrtis Major quadrangle, about 45.0 km (28.0 mi) in diameter. Thought to have once been flooded with water, the crater contains a fan-delta deposit rich in clays. The lake in the crater was present when valley networks were forming on Mars. Besides having a delta, the crater shows point bars and inverted channels. From a study of the delta and channels, it was concluded that the lake inside the crater probably formed during a period in which there was continual surface runoff.
Donna Lee Shirley is a former manager of Mars Exploration at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is the author of the book Managing Martians: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman's Lifelong Quest to Get to Mars—and of the Team Behind the Space Robot That Has Captured the Imagination of the World.
Edward Carroll Stone is an American space scientist, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, and former director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The embedded computer systems onboard Mars rovers are designed to withstand high radiation levels and large temperature changes in space. For this reason their computational resources are limited compared to systems commonly used on Earth.
Robert David Braun is an American aerospace engineer and academic. He has served as the dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, the David and Andrew Lewis Professor of Space Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the NASA Chief Technologist. Currently, Dr. Braun is the Space Sector Head at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
Morten Bo Madsen is a Danish physicist, associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute. He was a co-investigator on the Phoenix Mars mission which proved the presence of water on Mars.
The Materials Adherence Experiment (MAE) was a material science experiment conducted between July 4, 1997 and August 12, 1997 during NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission. This was a joint experiment between NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology that consisted of a small module mounted to Pathfinder's rover Sojourner that examined the effects of Martian surface dust on solar cells.
Sojourner is a robotic Mars rover that landed in the Ares Vallis channel in the Chryse Planitia region of the Oxia Palus quadrangle on July 4, 1997. Sojourner was operational on Mars for 92 sols. It was the first wheeled vehicle to rove on a planet other than Earth and formed part of the Mars Pathfinder mission.
Kobie Boykins is a senior mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In 2013, he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal. He designed the solar array systems for the Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and designed the actuators on the Mars rover Curiosity. He is currently the supervisor of the mobility and remote sensing teams for Curiosity. In 2003, he was part of NASA's M-Team, which lectured nationally to students regarding careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. He lectures internationally for National Geographic regarding exploration on Mars.
Alejandro Miguel San Martín is an Argentine engineer of NASA and a science educator. He is best known for his work as Chief Engineer for the Guidance, Navigation, and Control system in the latest missions to Mars. His best known contribution is the Sky Crane system, of which he is coinventor, used in the Curiosity mission for the descent of the rover.
Jennifer Harris Trosper is an American aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. During her 30-year career at JPL, Trosper has occupied crucial positions in engineering management pertaining to every spacecraft that has traversed the Martian surface. Because of her leadership and engineering expertise, Trosper has appeared on broadcast media outlets as an authority in development and execution of missions to Mars.