Adam Steltzner

Chapter 1 · 1970s – 1984 A bass player looks at Orion

At twenty, Adam Steltzner was playing bass in rock bands around the San Francisco Bay Area. Nothing suggested he would one day land a rover on Mars. A constellation would change his course.

A student who skipped class

He grew up in Marin County, north of San Francisco. In high school he refused to attend most classes except drama; he did just enough to graduate and never picked up his diploma. His father told him he would never be more than a ditch digger. After a short stint at Berklee College of Music in Boston, he came back to the Bay Area and played bass in local bands. He wanted to be a rock star.

Why stars move

In 1984, driving home after a gig with a new wave band, he crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and noticed that Orion was no longer in the same place in the sky. He wanted to understand why stars move. He enrolled at the College of Marin, a community college, to take an astronomy course. But first he had to take a non-math physics course taught by Stephen Prata. “He conveyed an excitement of learning,” he remembers. “I was hooked from there.”

In physics and engineering he found tangible rules: “Here was bedrock.” He threw himself into study with an intensity he compares to a monk’s. He remains an advocate of community colleges: “It’s not about prestige, it’s not about your SAT scores.”

Sources: J. Ouellette, “The Brilliance Behind the Plan to Land Curiosity on Mars,” Smithsonian Magazine, December 2013 (Marin County, high school and drama, the uncollected diploma, the father and the ditch digger, Berklee, bass, rock star, Orion from the Golden Gate Bridge, quotation, the monk); California Community Colleges, “Adam Steltzner” page (1984, new wave band, Orion, College of Marin, Stephen Prata’s course, quotations).

Chapter 2 · 1985 – 2003 Late studies and a job won by phone

The musician became an engineer. He got into JPL through persistence and found a culture that suited him: the only thing revered there is the truth.

Davis, Caltech, Wisconsin

After three semesters at the College of Marin, he transferred to the University of California, Davis, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1990. He went on to the California Institute of Technology, earning a master’s in applied mechanics in 1991. He landed his first JPL job by cold-calling scientists until one agreed to hire him in the spacecraft structures and dynamics group. He then worked toward a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison while working remotely for JPL during the academic year; according to Wikipedia, his 1999 thesis dealt with input force estimation and inverse structural filters.

A culture of truth

JPL, he says, “reveres the truth. There are no sacred cows, there is no dogmatism.” He likes to be on “the steep end of the learning curve,” tackling problems with little precedent. He worked on Galileo, Cassini, Mars Pathfinder, then on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, where he was in charge of the parachutes. The first tests went badly: one parachute shredded to pieces as it opened, then another failed to inflate fully. The team solved those problems, and both rovers landed flawlessly in 2004.

Sources: California Community Colleges, “Adam Steltzner” page (three semesters at the College of Marin, Davis degree); web search summarizing UC Davis (B.S. in mechanical engineering, 1990); J. Ouellette, Smithsonian Magazine, December 2013 (Caltech in 1991, applied mechanics, the phone calls, structures and dynamics group, Wisconsin Ph.D. while working remotely, quotations); English Wikipedia, “Adam Steltzner” (1999 thesis, Galileo, Cassini, Pathfinder, MER; tertiary source); NASA, “Houston We Have a Podcast,” “Concepts Near Science Fiction,” June 5, 2020 (MER parachute lead, the shredded parachute, “squidding,” the successful landings).

Chapter 3 · 2003 – 2012 Seven minutes of terror

Curiosity was too heavy to bounce on airbags. In 2003, Adam Steltzner and his team shut themselves away for three days to find another way to land it. They came up with the sky crane.

Three days of brainstorming

He led the mechanical engineering team, then the whole entry, descent and landing team of Mars Science Laboratory, some fifty people for about a decade. During three days of brainstorming in 2003, the team rejected a three-legged lander, too unstable for Curiosity’s weight. It settled on a strange idea: stay attached, come out together, do all the flying together, then lower the rover on cables from a powered stage hovering above the ground.

“The result of reasoned, engineering thought”

On June 22, 2012, JPL released a video: “Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror.” In it, Steltzner acknowledges that the system looks strange, but says it is “the result of reasoned, engineering thought.” The descent from the top of the atmosphere to the ground takes about seven minutes; since signals take about fourteen minutes to reach Earth, by the time controllers learn the spacecraft has hit the atmosphere, it has already been on the ground, or destroyed, for seven minutes. The heat shield reaches some 1,600 degrees and glows. About twenty meters above the ground, the rover is lowered on a 21-foot tether and set down on its wheels.

The night of August 5

In the preceding days, a radar anomaly worried the whole team. On landing night, August 5, 2012, in California, August 6 in Universal Time, he watched the monitor: nine years of work were at stake. “In the back of my mind I was waiting for something to go wrong. I was rationally confident and emotionally terrified.” When the sky crane sequence began, he thought: “I am like, really? Nine years and it’s just going to happen.” Al Chen announced: “Touchdown confirmed.” Curiosity was on Mars.

Sources: J. Ouellette, Smithsonian Magazine, December 2013 (EDL mechanical team lead, the three days in 2003, the three-legged lander, “You stay attached, come out together and do all your flying…,” nine years, quotations, “Touchdown confirmed”); English Wikipedia, “Adam Steltzner” (team of about fifty for a decade, radar anomaly for almost 72 hours, landing on August 6, 2012, UTC; tertiary source); NASA/JPL, “Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror,” video of June 22, 2012 (quotation, seven minutes, fourteen minutes, 1,600 degrees, 20 meters, 21-foot tether); NASA, “Here’s How Curiosity’s Sky Crane Changed the Way NASA Explores Mars,” August 7, 2024 (landing on August 5, 2012).

Chapter 4 · 2013 – 2025 A Swiss watch on Mars

After Curiosity, Adam Steltzner became chief engineer of Mars 2020. The new rover had to do something no robot had ever done: fill and seal sample tubes meant to return to Earth.

Three robots in place of two astronauts

“While you cannot help but marvel at what was achieved back in the days of Apollo, they did have one thing going for them we don’t: boots on the ground,” he said in 2020. “For us to collect the first samples of Mars for return to Earth, in place of two astronauts we have three robots that have to work with the precision of a Swiss watch.” The Sample Caching System has to drill into Martian rock on its own, pull out intact cores, then seal them hermetically in tubes almost entirely free of Earth-originating organic material. “In terms of technology, it is the most complicated, most sophisticated mechanism that we have ever built, tested and readied for spaceflight.”

He describes the choreography: the drill docks its filled bit with a carousel, which rotates it down inside the rover; a small arm pulls out the tube, images it, gauges the sample’s volume with a ramrod, images it again, picks up a seal, images it once more, seals the tube and returns it to storage.

An engineer on stage

From his rock years he kept a stage presence that has made him one of the space program’s most visible faces. In 2016 he published a book about his path, The Right Kind of Crazy. According to an event notice, he was elected that same year to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. Several profiles later present him as chief engineer of the Mars Sample Return program at JPL.

Sources: NASA/JPL, “The Extraordinary Sample-Gathering System of NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover,” June 2, 2020 (Mars 2020 chief engineer, quotations, the sampling sequence); California Community Colleges, “Adam Steltzner” page (Mars 2020 chief engineer); web search summarizing several profiles (stage presence, The Right Kind of Crazy, National Academy of Engineering election in 2016 according to an event notice, Mars Sample Return chief engineer). The 2016 date of the book comes from the same search, which cites a Gizmodo interview from that year. We have not read the book.