Nagin Cox gazed in awe at the picture on her screen–a flat, empty expanse with a barren hill in the distance. This was not a photo a friend had posted on Instagram while driving though Death Valley in California. This was Mars!
It was sent by the Perseverance rover. Cox says, “You’re looking at something that’s alien yet familiar, and you’re doing it through the eyes of our robotic emissary.”
Cox is an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. It’s a center of robotic space exploration for NASA (the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration). She has led teams on three previous Mars rover missions and has stared at many other photographs of the Martian landscape. But, she says, when she sees pictures taken by the rovers, “I still feel amazed, filled with wonder and delight.”
Realizing a Dream
Cox’s work at JPL was the culmination of a on TV with her friends and read science fiction. But it was Carl Sagan’s TV mini-series, in 1980, that led her toward science. In the 13-part series, astronomer Sagan guided viewers through an exploration of all aspects of the universe. He himself was a researcher and champion of robotic space missions. Cox was enthralled. She knew, at age 14, that she wanted to work in robotic space exploration, and JPL was to be her ultimate destination.
