Planetary Scientist Steve Squyres Joins Blue Origin as Chief Scientist
Steve Squyres, who served as principal investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, is retiring from Cornell University to become chief scientist at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, the Cornell Chronicle reports.
“Cornell has been a wonderful place for me, as both a student and a professor. With the Mars rover missions behind us, it’s time for me to find a new challenge, but I will always be a proud Cornellian,” Squyres said.
“Scientist, scholar and space explorer, Steve transformed planetary exploration through his leadership of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers,” said Jonathan I. Lunine, the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences and chair of the Department of Astronomy. “Now he goes on to a new challenge, working to transform the architecture of spaceflight at one of the most innovative companies in the industry.”
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“This mission [Spirit and Opportunity] was a great teaching tool,” Squyres said earlier this year for the celebration of the mission’s 15th anniversary. “It’s easy to think of science as a static body of knowledge that you learn from a textbook. It is not. We know more about Mars today than we knew two days ago. For years I’ve started each lecture with, ‘Here’s something that just came down from Mars.’”
“Steve has inspired countless students and colleagues over his decades at Cornell,” said Ray Jayawardhana, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences and professor of astronomy. “He brought Mars to campus and gave us all a chance to see another world close-up. His infectious enthusiasm for exploration will continue to stimulate planetary scientists at Cornell for years to come. We wish him all the best.”
NASA landed Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in January 2004 on nominal 90-day missions. Spirit last communicated with controllers on May 25, 2011 after more than seven years on the surface. Opportunity last communicated on June 10, 2018 as a dust storm engulfed the rover.
15 responses to “Planetary Scientist Steve Squyres Joins Blue Origin as Chief Scientist”
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It’s been a real let down when scientists join a private company like BO. They stop doing research, or stop doing research and publishing.
The idea that science should be a government monopoly is pretty much a post-WW2 meme and not one that has been particularly good for science as the ceaseless scramble for federal money has led to a vast increase in sketchy and even outright fraudulent “science” – especially in the now almost entirely corrupt field of “climate science.”
In any event, neither of your assertions are true. Scientists working for commercial enterprises – in what I have long referred to as “corporate academia” – have made many fundamental contributions to science, published a lot and even won Nobel Prizes. Penzias and Wilson worked for Bell Labs when they discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation. Binnig and Rohrer worked for IBM when they developed the scanning tunneling microscope.
Where’s Bell Labs now? Where’s Xerox Park? Where’s IBM’s labs? Other than a few IBM labs they’re all gone. Shareholders had no patience for them. I want a balance between government and private sector. There you go projecting again. Did you work in movie theatres back in the film days?
Replaced with hundreds of small nimble startups.
Hardly. Just a bunch of leaches wrecking perfectly fine industries that supported real infrastructure and other industries. I’m starting to notice clothing, shoe, and food selections that are starting to look somewhat Soviet, and I’m noticing that even car selection is forcing one to go far afield.
What “leaches[sic]” wrecked what “perfectly fine industries” and “real infrastructure?” Just because the academic left have all agreed that pink polka-dotted rhinoceri are now running amuck in the public streets doesn’t mean the rest of us can see them.
“Soviet” clothing, shoe and food selections? Once again, those of us not steeped in the wackadoodle cultural aperceptions of academic-left-statistm have no freakin’ clue what you’re on about here.
Finally, what exactly is it that you are seeking, automotively, that “is forcing one to go far afield?” Is it that most vehicles these days are four-door sedans, SUV’s or pickup-trucks and that all vehicles within a given class tend to look alike? That has nothing to do with private enterprise and everything to do with government regulation. Or did you have something entirely different in mind?
Your comments are coming, increasingly, to resemble the rantings of a streetcorner schizo.
You’re just calling me names like a middle school kid because history is proving me out so far and your losing. In the terms of your president. LOSING.
The answers to your stupid questions and points are pretty self evident. So I’m just going to ignore you. I have a flight to get ready for, you’re not worth it this evening.
IBM Research’s labs are all still around. There are a dozen of them, each with a different specialty.
Bell Labs is gone but the sorts of work it used to do – and probably some of its personnel – have been picked up by places like Intel and Cisco. The USG has never spent very lavishly on computing, semiconductor and telecommunications research – at least compared with outlays for physics, medicine and astronomy.
Xerox PARC mostly went to Sun Microsystems after Xerox faltered. When Sun did likewise, it – along with the rest of Sun – went to Oracle. An old classmate of mine, who was recruited by PARC as a newly-minted PhD and made her bones on the Star workstation project, rode that particular horse all the way to retirement through all its changes of ownership.
My only theater experience has been buying tickets and sitting in the dark with popcorn and a soda. I wasn’t projecting anent your reflexive academic-left-statism. Projecting means to falsely attribute one’s own desires, and failings – often unacknowledged – onto others. I have desires and failings but none of them have anything to do with academic-left-statism.
What I was doing was extrapolating. You say you want a mix of government and private sector, but you don’t really. Every time someone sticks you with a pin, you jump to the left. It’s long been abundantly clear that you regard the private sector as largely a den of con men, criminals and sociopaths. You come across about as sincerely, anent the private sector, as the fake-Hispanic Beto O’Rourke did a couple years back when he was busy lying to the people of TX about having no desire to take their guns.
Well, they have gone as far as they can with current rovers. Spirit and Opp are gone, ane the EELV was maxed out with the current two rovers that are atom powered. It is all maxed out.
I think he wants to make sure Blue will have a good interface with larger rovers/habs.
Payload guys want to get in early
There’s lots to do with rovers yet. And we could pepper Mars with a standard design if we’re not going to be sending people for another decade or more. The limitation is budgeting. Dr Squyres is a project manager and as such knows very little about the actual nuts and bolts of the spacecraft rather he’s familiar guiding other project managers through the process of bringing a spacecraft to life all the while keeping the interests of the scientists as a guiding influence on the whole process. It’ll be interesting to see what work he does, and what comes of it.
This should be of interest:
https://www.wired.com/2014/…
The Bickler Pantograph would become the basis for the mobility system on the 1997 Sojourner minirover, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity. Pivirotto lamented that “large ‘Godzilla’ rovers which simply roll over all obstacles would be precluded by launch vehicle mass and volume constraints.”
That’s where Blue has it over Falcon (though not Starship)
Falcon heavy could probably do the mission described above–but the payload shroud isn’t much different than the Titans.
Blue should be helpful with easing volume constraints. Steve is probably going to have Bezos build as wide as he can, if possible.
I’m surprised no one has done OTRAG. The largest versions had payloads that were not very tall–but very wide. That’s good for a rigid aerobrake.
I don’t trust inflates.
Could it be that Blue Origin is looking to build autonomous robotic moon rovers to scout out potential landing sites for Blue Moon? Steve Squires would be the guy to head a project like that.
Data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is more than adequate to choose landing sites. Maybe helping design rovers to hunt for ice at South Pole. He’s a Mars guy so it’s interesting he wound up at BO.
He’s a rover guy. Bezos is serious about the Moon and space industrialization. And he’s able to commit as much or more money to pursuing his plans as NASA is to planetary exploration. Squyres is an excellent “get” for Blue. I look forward to more great things from both.
this is a big deal…BO is on the move