adamsteltzner

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  • AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

    An interview with one of NASA's Curiosity Rover engineers

    by 
    Andy Meek
    Andy Meek
    03.10.2016

    With his Elvis haircut, his fondness for cowboy boots and the way he'll launch into soliloquies about big ideas like how to bend humanity toward collective self-improvement, Adam Steltzner might come off at first as some kind of hipster philosopher. That's one of the things that makes him such a memorable ambassador for NASA, his employer. Steltzner is in fact an engineer with an improbable combination of geek cred and California cool who this October will have spent 25 years working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He looks like a rock star -- plays bass guitar, in fact -- and can forcefully insist on humanity's imperative to explore the stars and to press against the limits of the known universe with little prompting.