Steve Collins (engineer)

Last updated

Steve Collins is an American physicist and engineer best known for his role in NASA Mars exploration program.

Contents

Education and early-life

Collins earned degrees in physics and theater arts from the University of California Santa Cruz [1] He is the son of Emmy winning cinematographer Bob Collins best known for his work on Superman and Miami Vice.[ citation needed ]

Career

Collins worked in the motion picture industry for a few years after graduation before being hired by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has worked on the Psyche, [2] Deep Impact [3] and Deep Space One missions on attitude, guidance and control. He worked as team lead on the Mars Exploration Program. [4] Collins served as senior guidance and control engineer on the Mars Science Laboratory mission. [5] Collins long hair along with Bobak Ferdowsi's mohawk, also drew attention as a new face of NASA. [5]

Outside of NASA, Collins acts in community theater including a part in a musical Star Trek parody presented by the Caltech theater arts department. [6] He also plays for JPL's employee soccer team, The Cosmics, and races autocross. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jet Propulsion Laboratory</span> Research and development center and NASA field center in California, United States

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Pickering (rocket scientist)</span>

William Hayward Pickering was a New Zealand-born aerospace engineer who headed Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22 years, retiring in 1976. He was a senior NASA luminary and pioneered the exploration of space. Pickering was also a founding member of the United States National Academy of Engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Elachi</span> Lebanese electrical engineer, JPL director

Charles Elachi is a Lebanese-American professor (emeritus) of electrical engineering and planetary science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). From 2001 to 2016 he was the 8th director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and vice president of Caltech.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gentry Lee</span> American scientist and science fiction author

Bert Gentry Lee is an American scientist, space engineer, and science fiction author. He is currently chief engineer for the Planetary Flight Systems Directorate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce C. Murray</span> American geologist and planetary scientist (1931–2013)

Bruce Churchill Murray was an American planetary scientist. He was a director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and co-founder of The Planetary Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan R. Cruz</span> Puerto Rican scientist

Juan R. Cruz, Ph.D., is a Puerto Rican aerospace engineer who played an instrumental role in the design and development of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) and Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) parachute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Adler</span> American software engineer

Mark Adler is an American software engineer. He is best known for his work in the field of data compression as the author of the Adler-32 checksum function, and a co-author together with Jean-loup Gailly of the zlib compression library and gzip. He has contributed to Info-ZIP, and has participated in developing the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image format. Adler was also the Spirit Cruise Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover mission.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Endeavour (crater)</span> Crater on Mars

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert J. Parks</span>

Robert J. "Bob" Parks was a US aerospace engineer and pioneer in the space program where he was intricately involved and/or directed for some of the most historic and important U.S. unmanned space missions. Over a 40-year tenure at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL/NASA), located in Pasadena, California, Parks’ impact was essential to helping the United States lead the world in space exploration. He served as Guidance Engineer for Explorer 1, the first successfully launched satellite by the United States. He directed the initial flyby missions to the Moon, the first soft landing on the moon, the world's first successful mission to another planet and initial missions to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus. Parks concluded his career as Deputy Director of the JPL/NASA and retired in 1987. Some of the awards he received for his work include the NASA Exceptional Service Medal (1967), the Stuart Ballantine Medal (1967), the Goddard Astronautics Award (1980) and the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award in 1982.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mars Cube One</span> 2018 Mars flyby mission

Mars Cube One was a Mars flyby mission launched on 5 May 2018 alongside NASA's InSight Mars lander. It consisted of two nanospacecraft, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, that provided real-time communications to Earth for InSight during its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on 26 November 2018 - when InSight was out of line of sight from the Earth. Both spacecraft were 6U CubeSats designed to test miniaturized communications and navigation technologies. These were the first CubeSats to operate beyond Earth orbit, and aside from telecommunications they also tested CubeSats' endurance in deep space. On 5 February 2019, NASA reported that both the CubeSats had gone silent by 5 January 2019, and are unlikely to be heard from again. In August 2019, the CubeSats were honored for their role in the successful landing of the InSight lander on Mars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psyche (spacecraft)</span> Reconnaissance of the main belt asteroid 16 Psyche

Psyche is a planned orbiter mission to explore the origin of planetary cores by studying the metallic asteroid of the same name. Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University is the principal investigator who proposed this mission for NASA's Discovery Program. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will manage the project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan G. Finley</span> Software engineer

Susan G. Finley, a native Californian, has been an employee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) since January 1958, making her the longest-serving woman in NASA. Two days before Explorer 1 was launched, Finley began her career with the laboratory as a human computer, calculating rocket launch trajectories by hand. She now serves as a subsystem engineer for NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN). At JPL, she has participated in the exploration of the Moon, the Sun, all the planets, and other bodies in the Solar System.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David A. Spencer</span>

David A. Spencer is the Mars Sample Return Campaign Mission Manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As an aerospace engineer, Spencer designs and operates planetary spacecraft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael M. Watkins</span>

Michael M. Watkins is an American engineer, scientist, and a Professor of Aerospace and Geophysics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He previously served as the 9th director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and as a vice president of Caltech, which staffs and manages JPL for NASA. His directorial position was effective from July 1, 2016 to August 20, 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Milkovich</span> Scientist

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MiMi Aung</span> American electronic engineer at NASA

MiMi Aun is a Burmese-American engineer and project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She is a lead engineer on the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, the first extraterrestrial aircraft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allen Chen</span> American aerospace engineer

Allen “Al” Chen is an American aerospace engineer. He was the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) Operations Lead on the Mars Science Laboratory mission and the EDL Lead for the Mars 2020 mission.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Y. Oh</span> Space Systems Engineer

David Y. Oh is an American spacecraft systems engineer and expert in electric propulsion. Oh currently works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as the NASA Psyche mission Project Systems Engineering Manager. Prior to his role on Psyche, he was the cross-cutting phase lead and lead flight director for the NASA Mars Science Laboratory mission and was recognized in popular media for living on Mars time with his family during the month following the landing of the Curiosity rover.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration</span> NASA program

Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) is a planetary exploration program operated by NASA. The mission builds small, low-cost spacecraft for stand-alone planetary exploration missions. These spacecraft launch as secondary payloads on other missions. The missions are riskier than Discovery or New Frontiers missions.

References

  1. 1 2 Townsend, Peggy. "Alumni Profile / Steve Collins: A 'real' rocket man". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  2. Hart, William; Brown, G. Mark; Collins, Steven M.; De Soria-Santacruz Pich, Maria; Fieseler, Paul; Goebel, Dan; Marsh, Danielle; Oh, David Y.; Snyder, Steve; Warner, Noah; Whiffen, Gregory (March 2018). "Overview of the spacecraft design for the Psyche mission concept". 2018 IEEE Aerospace Conference: 1–20. doi:10.1109/AERO.2018.8396444. ISBN   978-1-5386-2014-4. S2CID   49536224.
  3. "Deep Impact: Mission: Biographies: Steve Collins". deepimpact.umd.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  4. "Steve Collins | C-SPAN.org". www.c-span.org. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  5. 1 2 Kolawole, Emi (August 10, 2012). "NASA Curiosity crew members are hanging out with us today". Washington Post.
  6. "Caltech, JPL join forces for 'Star Trek' musical parody". Los Angeles Times. 2016-03-28. Retrieved 2020-08-07.