Steve Squyres
Professor of Physical Sciences - Cornell University
Gateway Regional High School, Woodbury Heights, NJ
Cornell University
Bachelor of Arts
Cornell University
Ph.D.
Steve Squyres is best known for his key role as principal Investigator for the science payload on the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1981 and spent five years as a postdoctoral associate and research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center (ARC) before returning to Cornell as a faculty member. His main areas of scientific interest have been on Mars and the moons of the outer planets.
Steve is a pioneer in the research of the history and distribution of water on Mars and of the possible existence and habitability of a liquid water ocean on Europa. He has participated in many of NASA's planetary exploration missions, including the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions to the outer solar system, the Magellan mission to Venus and the NEAR Shoemaker mission. Along with his work on the rovers, he is also a co-investigator on the Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions, a member of the Gamma-Ray Spectrometer Flight Investigation team for the Mars Odyssey mission, and a member of the imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn. He also participated in the Mars 96, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Observer missions.
There is no substitute for persistence. You must get all the training you need, and you must do well at it. That's a given. But in order to succeed in this business, the most important thing is to not let setbacks stop you.
Sending humans to Mars, the sooner the better.
I realized that this was what I wanted to do as an undergraduate in college, when I took a course on the results of the Viking mission to Mars. At that point I changed my main subject of study from geology to space science, and I have done nothing else ever since.
Ice climbing.
Planetary science is a global profession.