Nagin Cox | |
|---|---|
 Cox in 2018 | |
| Born | 1965 |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Jet Propulsion Laboratory North American Aerospace Defense Command |
Zainab Nagin Cox (born 1965) is a spacecraft operations engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Asteroid 14061 was named "Nagincox" after her in 2015. She has received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.
Cox was born in Bangalore. [1] She grew up in Kuala Lumpur and Kansas City, Kansas. [1] She went to school at Shawnee Mission East High School. [2] At school she was interested in Star Trek and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. [3] She studied engineering and psychology at Cornell University, graduating in 1986. [4] She earned a master's degree in space operations systems engineering from Air Force Institute of Technology in 1990. [5]
After graduating, Cox worked for the United States Air Force as a space operations officer. She worked in F-16 aircrew training. [6] She worked as an orbital analyst at North American Aerospace Defense Command. [5] Cox has worked as a spacecraft operations engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 1993. [5] She has been involved with several interplanetary robotic missions, including Galileo, InSight, Kepler, and Mars Curiosity. [7] She is a tactical mission lead, in charge of the uplink, downlink and advance planning teams. [8] Asteroid 14061 Nagincox, discovered in 1996, was named after her in 2015. [9] She won the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the Bruce Murray award in 2014 and has won the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal twice. [10] [11] [12]
Cox is passionate about increasing diversity within sciences, engineering and NASA. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] She served on the board of directors at Griffith Observatory. [18] She serves on the President's Council for Cornell Women Alumni. [19] She is an invited speaker for the United States Department of State, travelling the world talking about her career and NASA's robotic space exploration program. [20] In 2014 she visited Pakistan, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, inspiring young women from unprivileged communities to study sciences and engineering. [21] She was a keynote speaker at SIGGRAPH 2016. [22] [23] She visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2016, touring the country with the United States Department of State. [24] [25] She gave a TEDx talk at Beacon Street in 2017, which was later chosen by Wired as one of the best science talks. [26] [27] "What time is it on Mars?" has been viewed almost two million times. [28] She visited Kuwait in 2018, discussing their 2021 Mars mission. [29] [30]
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. It is hoped that the data Odyssey obtains will help answer the question of whether life 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.
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.
Spirit, also known as MER-A or MER-2, is a Mars robotic rover, active from 2004 to 2010. Spirit was operational on Mars for 2208 sols or 3.3 Martian years. It was one of two rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Spirit landed successfully within the impact crater Gusev on Mars at 04:35 Ground UTC on January 4, 2004, three weeks before its twin, Opportunity (MER-B), which landed on the other side of the planet. Its name was chosen through a NASA-sponsored student essay competition. The rover got stuck in a "sand trap" in late 2009 at an angle that hampered recharging of its batteries; its last communication with Earth was on March 22, 2010.
Opportunity, also known as MER-B or MER-1, is a robotic rover that was active on Mars from 2004 until 2018. Opportunity was operational on Mars for 5111 sols. Launched on July 7, 2003, as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover program, it landed in Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, three weeks after its twin, Spirit (MER-A), touched down on the other side of the planet. With a planned 90-sol duration of activity, Spirit functioned until it got stuck in 2009 and ceased communications in 2010, while Opportunity was able to stay operational for 5111 sols after landing, maintaining its power and key systems through continual recharging of its batteries using solar power, and hibernating during events such as dust storms to save power. This careful operation allowed Opportunity to operate for 57 times its designed lifespan, exceeding the initial plan by 14 years, 47 days. By June 10, 2018, when it last contacted NASA, the rover had traveled a distance of 45.16 kilometers.
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.
Endeavour is an impact crater located in the Meridiani Planum extraterrestrial plain within the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle (MC-19) region of the planet Mars. Endeavour is about 22 kilometers (14 mi) in diameter. Using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data, phyllosilicate-bearing outcrops have been detected along its rim. These minerals may have formed under wet conditions in a low-acidic environment during the early history of Mars. There are raised rim segments to the north, east, and southwest. The rim has become worn, rounded and degraded, with infilling of plains material in a manner similar to the Victoria crater.
The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission was a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space, was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and two of its three scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05:01 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. InSight was active on Mars for 1440 sols.
Curiosity is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Gale crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral (CCAFS) on November 26, 2011, at 15:02:00 UTC and landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gale crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17:57 UTC. The Bradbury Landing site was less than 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from the center of the rover's touchdown target after a 560 million km (350 million mi) journey.
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.
Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission forming part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the rover Perseverance, the small robotic, coaxial helicopter Ingenuity, and associated delivery vehicles. Mars 2020 was launched from Earth on an Atlas V launch vehicle at 11:50:01 UTC on 30 July 2020, and confirmation of touch down in the Martian crater Jezero was received at 20:55 UTC on 18 February 2021. On 5 March 2021, NASA named the landing site of the rover Octavia E. Butler Landing. As of 15 February 2023, Perseverance and Ingenuity have been on Mars for 707 sols.
Opportunity is a robotic rover that was active on the planet Mars from 2004 to 2018. Launched on July 7, 2003, Opportunity landed on Mars' Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, at 05:05 Ground UTC, three weeks after its twin Spirit (MER-A), also part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission, touched down on the other side of the planet. While Spirit became immobile in 2009 and ceased communications in 2010, Opportunity exceeded its planned 90 sol duration of activity by 14 years 46 days. Opportunity continued to move, gather scientific observations, and report back to Earth until 2018. What follows is a summary of events during its continuing mission.
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.
Tracy Drain is a Flight Systems Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs. She is the Deputy Chief Engineer for the JUNO mission, which arrived at Jupiter in June 2016.
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Lady Diana Trujillo Pomerantz is a Colombian aerospace engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She currently leads the engineering team at JPL responsible for the robotic arm of the Perseverance rover. On February 18, 2021, Trujillo hosted the first ever Spanish-language NASA transmission of a planetary landing, for the Perseverance rover landing on Mars.
Sarah Milkovich is lead of Science Operations for the Mars 2020 rover at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was investigation scientist for the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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