Steven W. Squyres
Steven Squyres is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University and the principal scientific investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover project. He earned his PhD in astronomy from Cornell in 1981.
In 2007, he received the Franklin Institute’s Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science for his achievements with the Mars Exploration Rover Project. The award is given for uncommon insight, skill, or creativity. Previous recipients have included luminaries such as Stephen Hawking, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein.
Squyres’ research focuses on the large solid bodies of the solar system: the planets and the satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Areas of particular interest include the tectonics of Venus, the history of water on Mars, and the geophysics of the icy satellites of the outer planets.
He has participated in a number of planetary spaceflight missions. From 1978 to 1981 he was an associate of the Voyager imaging science team, participating in analysis of imaging data from the encounters with Jupiter and Saturn. He was a radar investigator on the Magellan mission to Venus, a member of the Mars Observer gamma-ray spectrometer flight investigation team, and a co-investigator on the Russian Mars ’96 mission.
He is a co-investigator on the Mars Express mission, and on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's high-resolution imaging science experiment. He is 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.
