Firouz Naderi (1946-2023), Memories of a Famous Leader of JPL Mars Missions Options

[Tom Tamlyn]

Sad news:

Firouz Naderi, NASA Scientist Who Led Mars Missions, Dies at 77 In a career that was an inspiration to Iranians and Iranian Americans, he oversaw multiple missions to Mars, including two successful landings.

Firouz Naderi, an Iranian American scientist who directed the Mars program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, including two successful landings on the planet, died on June 9 in Los Angeles. He was 77.

His family said that Dr. Naderi died in a medical facility from complications of a fall last month that damaged his spinal cord and left him paralyzed. “Life is unpredictable,” Dr. Naderi said in a statement on Facebook after the accident.

Laurie Leshin, the director of the laboratory, said in an email that Dr. Naderi was “a visionary whose work impacted many of the space missions developed at JPL over the past three decades.” She also said that he was a “brilliant mentor to those leading our space exploration missions today.”

Gift Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/science/...;smid=url-share

I remember hearing Dr. Naderi speak at many press conferences and JPL events, especially during the early period of the MER program, when getting detailed current information about the mission meant repeated visits to the C-SPAN website.

RIP.