T. Adrian Hill
Fault Protection Lead for MESSENGER, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Being a critical player for two different space missions simultaneously should be a challenge for anyone, but it doesn't seem to faze T. Adrian Hill, who serves as the fault protection lead not just for MESSENGER, but also for the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt.
"I feel very fortunate that I am able to work on two spacecraft that are going to opposite ends of the solar system," he says. "How many people can make a claim to that?"
Candice Hansen (new window)
Planetary Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Candice Hansen is studying very different planets: she analyzes data from the Cassini mission at Saturn and from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at Mars.
"Ever since I was a pre-teen I loved reading science fiction. I still do. When I attended California State University Fullerton, my favorite professor was involved with the Apollo program. She encouraged me to go to the University of Arizona in Tucson for graduate school. My advisor was Brad Smith, the leader of the Voyager Imaging team. I talked him into sending me to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to work for the summer, and I've been here ever since."
