The Man Behind Perseverance and the Mission to Mars

Perseverance chief engineer Adam Steltzner gives remarks during a NASA Perseverance rover initial surface checkout briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Feb. 19, 2021. Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images

Commentary

I’ve been fascinated by space since my earliest childhood, when I would read comic books about Martian invasions of Earth and rockets that took humans to the far reaches of the universe.