Steven Squyres Principal Investigator Professor of Astronomy Cornell University

Steven Squyres is a professor of astronomy at Cornell University and is the principal investigator for the Athena science payload on the Mars Exploration Rover Project. His main areas of scientific interest have been Mars and the moons of the outer planets. Research for which he is best known includes study of the history and distribution of water on Mars and of the possible existence and habitability of a liquid water ocean on Europa.

Squyres received his doctorate degree from Cornell in 1981 and spent five years as a postdoctoral associate and research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center before returning to Cornell as a faculty member.

He has participated in many of NASA's planetary exploration missions, including the Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn, the Magellan mission to Venus, and the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission. Along with his work on MER, he is also a co-investigator on the 2003 Mars Express and 2005 Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter missions, a member of the Gamma-Ray Spectrometer Flight Investigation Team for the Mars Odyssey mission, and a member of the imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn. Dr. Squyres recently served as Chair of the NASA Space Science Advisory Committee and as a member of the NASA Advisory Council.