Steve Squyres

Steven W. Squyres (born 9 January 1957) is a professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, (USA). His area of ​​research is planetary science, with emphasis on the large solid bodies in the solar system such as the terrestrial planets and the moons of the gas giants. Squyres is principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission ( MER). He is a former student of the late Carl Sagan. He was awarded the 2004 Carl Sagan Memorial Award and the 2009 Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Communication in Planetary Science. He is the brother of Tim Squyres.

Training

After high school, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology in 1978 and 1982, the Doctor of Philosophy from Cornell University. He spent five years as a researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center before returning to Cornell University in 1987. He received the 1987 Hans Christian Urey Prize of the American Astronomical Society. In 2007 he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Earth and Environmental Sciences from the Franklin Institute.

NASA

Squyres has participated in many planets NASA missions, including Voyager 1 and 2, Magellan and the NEAR Shoemaker. In addition to his work on the MER mission, he is co-investigator of the missions Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. He is a member of the team of the Mars Odyssey and the Cassini -Huygens mission. Squyres has the Presidency of the NASA Space Science Advisory Committee and is a member of the NASA Advisory Council.

From the 20th - 26th October 2011 he was a member, together with the Aquanauts Shannon Walker ( commander), Takuya Onishi ( JAXA ) and David Saint- Jacques ( CSA) to the NASA undersea mission NEEMO - 15th

Media

ABC News drew Squyres of as "Person of the Week" on 9 January 2004, after the spacecraft had successfully landed Spirit on Mars. He received the 2005 Wired Rave Award for Science from Wired Magazine for the construction of Spirit and Opportunity, the time already had survived the three ten times its design life.

About the MER mission Steven Squyres wrote the book Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet, which served the IMAX Roving Mars production of Disney as a template.