14 DAY TRIAL // In a festivity that took place at the Arizona State University (ASU) on October 7, the 2010 Eugene Shoemaker Memorial Award was presented to Steve Squyres, a Cornell University professor.
The expert is the principal investigator for the science payload suites on both Spirit and Opportunity. The robots are part of the surprisingly-successful NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) program.
According to the ASU BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, which gives away the prize every year, the Shoemaker Memorial Award is given to celebrate a prominent scientist's life and career.
BEYOND official Paul Davies says that Steve Squyers, in short, epitomizes the very spirit of Gene Shoemaker. The astronomer and his wife Carolyn are famous for the pioneering work they did in the field of asteroid and comet impacts.
The Cornell professor accepted the award with a lecture entitled “Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet.”
“Steve Squyres epitomizes the drive and inventive spirit of Gene Shoemaker. Steve narrates a life-long adventure of exploration, endurance and wonderment […]. He's a masterful storyteller,” Davies says.
The official is the founding director of the BEYOND Center, as well as a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. The Center itself is often referred to as a “cosmic think-tank.”
One of the interesting things about this year's ceremony is that Squyres actually knew Shoemaker in real life. “I got to work with him when I was a graduate student on the Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn,” he said.
“In fact, I picked my thesis topic specifically because it would give me the chance to work with Gene,” the Cornell Goldwin Smith professor of astronomy said, quoted by SpaceRef.
“Gene was a field geologist at heart, and our rovers are doing field geology on Mars. One of my greatest regrets about MER is that Gene didn't get to be part of it,” he added.
The MER launched to Mars in 2004, in what was to be a three-month-long endeavor to survey the geology of the Red Planet. But both rovers have been driving across the surface of the planet ever since.
They exceeded their planned life span by more than 20 times over, and have produced science databases of inestimable value. Squyres played a central role in analyzing the information that the rovers' instruments sent bacl.
“He is remarkably passionate about the exploration of space and that shows in what he does. He was the Energizer Bunny on the MER team; a first rate scientist,” says expert Philip Christensen.
He is also a Mars explorer, the ASU Regents' Professor of Geological Sciences, and the designer of Spirit and Opportunity's Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (mini-TES).