Three From JPL on Time Magazine 'Most Influential' List

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2013-141 April 18, 2013

Three From JPL on Time Magazine 'Most Influential' List

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-141&cid=release_2013-141

PASADENA, Calif. -- On a new list of the 100 most influential people on Earth, three work at
the same California address, where they've led projects to study things that are not on Earth. The
list announced today by TIME Magazine includes Don Yeomans, Pete Theisinger and Richard
Cook, all at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Yeomans manages NASA's Near-Earth Objects Program Office at JPL, which coordinates the
search for and tracking of asteroids and comets passing into Earth's neighborhood to identify
possible hazards to Earth.

Since 2004, Theisinger and Cook have alternated managing NASA's Mars Science Laboratory
project, which landed the highly successful car-sized Curiosity rover on Mars last summer. Both
previously managed NASA's Mars Exploration Rover project with its twin rovers, Spirit and
Opportunity.

The TIME 100, as the magazine's Managing Editor Richard Stengel has explained, is "a list of
the most influential people in the world. They're scientists, they're thinkers, they're philosophers,
they're leaders, they're icons, they're artists, they're visionaries. People who are using their ideas,
their visions, their actions to transform the world and have an effect on a multitude of people."

"We are honored to have three distinguished individuals from JPL on the TIME list of most
influential people," said JPL Director Charles Elachi. "Their contributions in the fields of asteroid
research and Mars exploration is representative of all the exciting and important work being done
at NASA and JPL on behalf of the American people."

Yeomans grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and now lives in Glendale, Calif. He graduated from
Middlebury College, Vt., with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and earned a doctorate in
astronomy from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has worked at JPL since 1976. In
addition to managing NASA's Near-Earth Objects Program Office, Yeomans is supervisor for
JPL's Solar System Dynamics Group. He was a science team member for the Deep
Impact/EPOXI mission, which deployed an impactor that was "run over" by comet Tempel 1 in
2005 and flew close to comet Hartley 2 in 2010. He was also the U.S. project scientist for the
Japanese-led Hayabusa mission that returned a sample from near-Earth object Itokawa in 2010,
and a team chief for the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission that orbited, then landed on
the asteroid Eros in 2001. The first images of the return of comet Halley in 1982 were also
obtained based on Yeoman's predictions.

Theisinger is a native of Fresno, Calif., and lives now in La Crescenta, Calif. He graduated from
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, with a degree in physics. His career at JPL
began in 1967 with the Mariner 5 mission to Venus and now includes contributions to missions
including the Voyager mission to the outer planets (launched in 1977 and still going) and the
Galileo mission to Jupiter (launched in 1989 and concluded in 2003). His Mars experience dates
back to the 1971 Mariner 9 orbiter mission to Mars.

Cook is originally from Bismarck, N.D., and now lives in Santa Clarita, Calif. He earned a
bachelor's degree in engineering physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a
master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas, Austin. Cook joined JPL
in 1989, working first on the Magellan mission to Venus. He was the Mars Pathfinder mission
manager responsible for operating the first rover – Sojourner – on the surface of Mars in 1997.
He held several roles on the Mars Exploration Rover project, which landed the Spirit and
Opportunity rovers in 2004, including flight system manager and project manager.

The NASA Near Earth Objects (NEO) program at the agency's headquarters in Washington
manages and funds the search, study and monitoring of NEOs, or asteroids and comets, whose
orbits periodically bring them close to Earth. NASA's study of NEOs provides important clues to
understanding the origin of our solar system. The objects also are a repository of natural
resources and could become waystations for future exploration. In collaboration with other
external organizations, one of the program's key goals is to search for and try to mitigate
potential NEO impacts on Earth. JPL conducts the NEO program's technical and scientific
activities.

For more information about asteroids and near-Earth objects, visit:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch .

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity to investigate the environmental
history within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that conditions were long ago
favorable for microbial life. Curiosity, carrying 10 science instruments, landed in August 2012 to
begin its two-year prime mission. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the project for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .
The TIME profile of Yeomans can be seen at: http://time100.time.com/2013/04/18/time-
100/slide/don-yeomans/ . The profile of Theisinger and Cook can be seen at:
http://time100.time.com/2013/04/18/time-100/slide/peter-theisinger-and-richard-cook/
. More information on the TIME 100 can be found at: http://www.time.com/time100 .

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