Book Steven Squyres for Speaking, Events and Appearances | APB Speakers
26 Jun 2019
After fifteen years, the Mars exploration mission spearheaded by APB speaker Steven Squyres ended after a planet-wide dust storm destroyed the last remaining rover “Opportunity.”
On July 7, 2003, Dr. Squyres and a team of scientists at Cornell University launched Opportunity into space. Over the course of six months and nineteen days, the high-tech rover traveled 283 million miles before making a perfect landing on Mars. Built to last the 90-day mission, Opportunity managed to explore Mars for over 15 years. The footage captured by Squyres’ team was critical to our understanding of the habitability of Mars. Opportunity was central in discovering evidence of water on the planet. Unfortunately, after a dust storm blocked the sun on Mars, communication with Opportunity was lost and could not be re-established. Regarding the mission, Squyres says: “The payoff has been immensely greater than anything ever imagined in our wildest dreams.”
A sought-after corporate speaker, he shares the fascinating development of Spirit and Opportunity and how a team of more than 4,000 highly motivated engineers and scientists overcame a host of challenges. Join Dr. Squyres as he takes you through initial conception, development and the design process that led to such extraordinary performance, launch, landing and six years of exploration on Mars.