Tony Spear | |
|---|---|
 Spear at JPL | |
| Alma mater | University of Southern California |
Anthony Spear was an American space exploration project manager most notable for leading the Mars Pathfinder mission for JPL/NASA in 1996. [1] He retired from JPL in 1998. [2] He competed for the Google Lunar X Prize with Red Whittaker, Astrobotic, and Carnegie Mellon University, where he received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1962. [3] [4]
After graduating from high school, Spear spent four years in the US Air Force attending radio school and working in radio repair on jet fighters. He then went on to get his B.S. from Carnegie Mellon, and then an M.S. degree from the University of Southern California.
Spear worked at JPL in Pasadena, California while taking classes toward his master's degree. He also did graduate work in the Engineering Executive Program at the UCLA and earned a master's of engineering.
Spear held many different jobs since beginning his career at JPL in 1962. He first started out in Deep Space Telecommunication System Engineering where he was involved in the design and development of NASA's Mariner program missions from 1964 to 1973. He also helped design the lander-orbiter relay communications link for the Viking program mission in 1976.
From 1975 to 1979, he began to manage the development and implementation of the microwave instruments for the NASA SEASAT mission, including the first synthetic aperture imaging radar to fly in space. For the next 11 years, Spear worked in various capacities for the Magellan probe mission.
After leading JPL's initial studies of NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" fixed-priced, low-cost, quick-reaction Discovery program missions, Tony Spear began working as the project manager for the Mars Pathfinder mission. He managed the successful landing of the Pathfinder shuttle and the Sojourner rover.
Said Daniel S. Goldin of Spear, "Tony Spear was a legendary project manager at JPL and helped make Mars Pathfinder the riveting success that it was." [5]
Minor planet 6487 Tonyspear is named after him. He died on June 4 2024 at 87 [6]
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by NASA and administered and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
Mars Pathfinder was 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.
The Discovery Program is a series of Solar System exploration missions funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through its Planetary Missions Program Office. The cost of each mission is capped at a lower level than missions from NASA's New Frontiers or Flagship Programs. As a result, Discovery missions tend to be more focused on a specific scientific goal rather than serving a general purpose.
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.
William Francis Readdy is a former Associate Administrator of the Office of Space Flight, at NASA Headquarters.
William L. "Red" Whittaker is an American roboticist and research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He led Tartan Racing to its first-place victory in the DARPA Grand Challenge (2007) Urban Challenge and brought Carnegie Mellon University the two million dollar prize. Previously, Whittaker also competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge, placing second and third place simultaneously in the Grand Challenge Races.
"Astrobiology of Icy Worlds". astrobiology.nasa.gov. December 2014. Archived from the original on 2024-05-16. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
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.
James Slattin Martin Jr. was project manager for the Viking program.
Astrobotic Technology, Inc., commonly referred to as Astrobotic, is an American private company that is developing space robotics technology for lunar and planetary missions. It was founded in 2007 by Carnegie Mellon professor Red Whittaker and his associates with the goal of winning the Google Lunar X Prize. The company is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their first launch occurred on January 8, 2024, as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The launch carried the company's Peregrine lunar lander on board the first flight of the Vulcan Centaur rocket from Florida's Space Force Station LC-41. The mission was unable to reach the Moon for a soft or hard landing. On June 11, 2020, Astrobotic received a second contract for the CLPS program. NASA would pay Astrobotic US$199.5 million to take the VIPER rover to the Moon, targeting a landing in November 2024. In July 2024, NASA announced that VIPER had been cancelled.
Edward Carroll Stone was an American space scientist, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, and director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The robotic Sojourner rover reached Mars on July 4, 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. Sojourner was operational on Mars for 92 sols, and was the first wheeled vehicle to operate on an astronomical object other than the Earth or Moon. The landing site was in the Ares Vallis channel in the Chryse Planitia region of the Oxia Palus quadrangle.
Robert J. "Bob" Parks was an American 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. uncrewed 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, Earth's first successful mission to another planet and initial missions to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus.
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.
Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon. Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole where they will scout for lunar resources, test in situ resource utilization (ISRU) concepts, and perform lunar science to support the Artemis lunar program. CLPS is intended to buy end-to-end payload services between Earth and the lunar surface using fixed-price contracts. The program achieved the first landing on the moon by a commercial company in history with the IM-1 mission in 2024. The program was extended to add support for large payloads starting after 2025.
CubeRover is a class of planetary rover with a standardized modular format meant to accelerate the pace of space exploration. The idea is equivalent to that of the successful CubeSat format, with standardized off-the-shelf components and architecture to assemble small units that will be all compatible, modular, and inexpensive.
Vandana "Vandi" Verma is a space roboticist and chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, known for driving the Mars rovers, notably Curiosity and Perseverance, using software including PLEXIL programming technology that she co-wrote and developed.
Baerbel Kösters Lucchitta is a scientist emeritus at the Astrogeology Science Center at the USGS and one of the first women in the field of Astrogeology. She was one of the people responsible of making lunar maps for the Apollo 11 mission. During her career, she was dedicated to mapping the Moon, Mars, Europa and the Galilean Satellites, and Antarctica. The Lucchitta Glacier is named after her work in Antarctica, and the Asteroid 4569 Baerbel is named after her work in planetary geology.
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.