Our group prides itself on our support of spacecraft operations and science
Space Missions
At the root, our work flows from our passion for solar system exploration.
Below, discover the missions to which we have contributed.
The Huygens Mission
During my PhD, my advisor Peter Smith invited me to be a part of the science team for his advisor’s instrument: the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) on the Huygens Mission to Saturn’s Moon Titan. I was fortunate to be at ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany for the landing in 2005 and was in the room when the first images from the surface of Titan arrived back on Earth. This formative experience changed my life! My work on the Side Looking Imager (SLI) became part of the Nature paper on DISR, my very first publication as a Scientist.
The Phoenix Mission
Working on the Phoenix Mission taught me just how powerful the combination of engineering and science can be. As a PhD student in Peter Smith’s lab, I served as a Science Planner/Integrator whose responsibility is reconciling the science desires of the science team and the engineering capabilities of the spacecraft into a high-level plan. I loved it!
Beyond my operational role, I was a Science Team Collaborator and led peer-reviewed papers on wind direction, clouds, fog and dust accumulation on the lander’s surfaces. I won two NASA Group Achievement awards for my contributions.
The Curiosity Mission
(Mars Science Lab)
While still a postdoc, I became a Participating Scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory Mission (Curiosity) investigating clouds, dust and methane at Gale Crater on Mars. Our group has published 23 papers using MSL mission data and supported over 600 mission operations shifts over the past 11 years. We have won 14 NASA Group Achievement Awards for our contributions to this mission.
The InSight Mission
We joined forces with Dr. Mark Lemmon to help support the InSight mission, serving on his Participating Scientist grant as collaborators. Charissa Campbell led work analyzing wind speed and direction from the lander’s cameras.
The Juno Mission
While serving as a postdoctoral fellow in my group, Dr. Christina Smith was selected as a Participating Scientist on the Juno Mission in 2018. She served as the Science PI on the grant while I served as funding PI.