Steve Collins (engineer)

Steve Collins is an American physicist and engineer best known for his role in NASA Mars exploration program.

Education and early-life

Collins earned degrees in physics and theater arts from the University of California Santa Cruz[1] He is the son of Emmy winning cinematographer Bob Collins best known for his work on Superman and Miami Vice.

Career

Collins worked in the motion picture industry for a few years after graduation before being hired by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has worked on the Psyche,[2] Deep Impact[3] and Deep Space One missions on attitude, guidance and control. He worked as team lead on the Mars Exploration Program.[4] Collins served as senior guidance and control engineer on the Mars Science Laboratory mission.[5] Collins long hair along with Bobak Ferdowsi's mohawk, also drew attention as a new face of NASA.[5]

Outside of NASA, Collins acts in community theater including a part in a musical Star Trek parody presented by the CalTech theater arts department.[6] He also plays for JPL's employee soccer team, The Cosmics, and races autocross.[1]

References
  1. Townsend, Peggy. "Alumni Profile / Steve Collins: A 'real' rocket man". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  2. Hart, William; Brown, G. Mark; Collins, Steven M.; De Soria-Santacruz Pich, Maria; Fieseler, Paul; Goebel, Dan; Marsh, Danielle; Oh, David Y.; Snyder, Steve; Warner, Noah; Whiffen, Gregory (March 2018). "Overview of the spacecraft design for the Psyche mission concept". 2018 IEEE Aerospace Conference: 1–20. doi:10.1109/AERO.2018.8396444. ISBN 978-1-5386-2014-4. S2CID 49536224.
  3. "Deep Impact: Mission: Biographies: Steve Collins". deepimpact.umd.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  4. "Steve Collins | C-SPAN.org". www.c-span.org. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  5. Kolawole, Emi (August 10, 2012). "NASA Curiosity crew members are hanging out with us today". Washington Post.
  6. "Caltech, JPL join forces for 'Star Trek' musical parody". Los Angeles Times. 2016-03-28. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.