San Antonio Native Phillip Hargrove Helps NASA Send Its Newest Rover to Mars
Friday, July 31, 2020
Posted By Brianna Espinoza on Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 3:40 PM
- Facebook / NASA Explores
- Hargrove speaks in a Facebook video about the SpaceX Hangar at Kennedy Space Center, posted in May of this year.
NASA’s latest Mars rover launched this week with a San Antonio assist.
Alamo City native Phillip Hargrove works as a trajectory analyst on the ambitious project, meaning he’s part of the team that determines the best path of travel for the rocket carrying the rover, KSAT reports.
Aptly named for 2020, the Perseverance Rover is now on its way to explore the red planet, looking for evidence of ancient microbial life.
Spending his childhood summers at the Johnson Space Camp in Houston paid off for Hargrove, since he’s now literally shooting for the stars. A graduate of Reagan High School, Hargrove earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at Stanford University and a master’s degree at the University of Michigan before landing — pun intended — his NASA gig in 2017.
Hargrove told KSAT his team’s work at NASA serves a bigger purpose: “It’s science for the sake of science and science for the sake of benefiting humanity.”
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