The Innovative Minds Lecture Series presents Hitting the Road on Mars: The Mars Exploration Rover’s Mission & Beyond
Thursday, March 1, 2007 7:30 p.m. Gates Common Room Nagin Cox Technical Group Supervisor- Surface Systems Systems Engineering NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Since the beginning of time, people have been entranced by the night sky and by our nearest planetary neighbor- Mars. From the early missions to Viking, Pathfinder and the more recent missions – Mars has been (and is) a challenging destination. The Mars Exploration Rovers landed on Mars in January 2004 and have begun to unveil many of its mysteries. Come hear the story of the successful landings and the early dramatic days of the ongoing rover mission. COLORADO COLLEGE
Nagin graduated from Cornell University with a BS in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering and a BA in Psychology and was commissioned as an officer in the US Air Force. As a lieutenant, she was stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and worked as a systems engineer in F-16 aircrew training. Then she attended the Air Force Institute of Technology where she received a masters degree in Space Operations Systems Engineering . As a captain, she served as an Orbital Analyst at NORAD/Space Command in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs.
After leaving the Air Force to pursue more civilian space applications, she joined JPL and began her time on planetary missions working in outer solar system projects. She served as the Deputy Team Chief of the engineering spacecraft flight team for NASA/JPLs Galileo mission to Jupiter until February of 2000. She then chose to contribute to inner solar system exploration as the Deputy Team Chief of the Spacecraft/Rover Engineering Flight Team on the JPL Mars Exploration Rover Missions from its inception in 2000 until July 2004. Then after two years in extra-solar exploration as the Deputy Project System Engineer on the Kepler telescope mission to search for earth-like planets around other stars, she has recently returned to supporting the Mars Program. Nagin puts it best when she asks, “How cool is that?”
Sponsored by The Colorado Thirty Group, the Space Foundation, and Colorado College