Managing Martians

About this book

The leader of the team that created the revolutionary Mars Sojourner rover chronicles her trailblazing career in space exploration and tells the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of the celebrated Mars Pathfinder mission. Donna Shirleys 35-year career as an aerospace engineer reached a jubilant pinnacle in July 1997 when Sojourner--the solar-powered self-guided microwave-oven-sized rover--was seen exploring the Martian landscape in Pathfinders spectacular images from the surface of the red planet. The event marked a milestone in space exploration--no vehicle had ever before roamed the surface of another planet. But for Donna Shirley the manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratorys Mars Exploration Program who headed the mostly male team that designed and built Sojourner it marked a triumph of another kind. Since her childhood in Oklahoma Shirley had dreamed of traveling to Mars and through Pathfinder she did just that. Managing Martians is Shirleys captivating memoir of a life and career spent reaching for the stars. From her seemingly outlandish aspiration at age ten to build aircraft to abandoning high school Home Ec in favor of mechanical drawing and at sixteen becoming a licensed pilot Shirley defied expectations from the beginning. The only female engineering student in her college class Shirley earned a degree in aerospace/mechanical engineering (while picking up a beauty contest title along the way) and in 1966 began a career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that has spanned twenty-four different projects including Mariner 10s trip to Venus and Mercury and a 1991 assignment as chief engineer of a $1.6 billion project to explore asteroids a comet and Saturn. Shirleys innovations in automation and robotics paved the way to her being named the first woman ever to manage a NASA program. For Pathfinder she assembled a brilliant band of upstarts (her fellow "Martians") and embarked on an improbable mission: to put an untethered fully automated rover on Mars--at a fraction of the cost of any previous Mars project. In a vivid narrative rich with anecdotes and thrilling turning points Shirley recounts the intense battles she waged to defend her vision and the ingenuity and resourcefulness of her committed team. Her moment-by-cliffhanging-moment account of Pathfinders landing and Sojourners first tentative foray across the sands of Mars brilliantly captures the fulfillment of a lifelong dream as it heralds a brave new era of space exploration.