Norm Pence is a Staff Software Engineer for Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Space Exploration Systems. He was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, in 1943 and received a B.S. Degree in Mathematics from the University of Oklahoma in 1966.

He has been an employee of Lockheed Martin Astronautics since August 1980. For the first 13 years of his career at LMA, he worked software development, test and launch support for a series of Titan launch vehicles including Titan II, Titan III, Titan IV and Commerical Titan.

In July 1994, he transferred to the Space Exploration Systems part of the company to begin work on the Mars Global Surveyor project as a flight software development and test engineer. In September 1996, he joined the MGS Flight Operations team as the Flight Software lead. After MGS reached its mapping orbit, he then, in parallel with his MGS duties, began software acceptance testing for the Mars Odyssey and Genesis programs including launch support.

He is currently providing flight software operations support for the MGS, Stardust, Mars Odyssey and Genesis spacecraft.