Wesley Huntress
Wesley T. Huntress, Jr. is an American space scientist. An astrochemist and space scientist, Huntress worked for about twenty years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the 1980s, he was also a video game designer, producing games for Apple computers. In 1988, Huntress moved to NASA headquarters, where he would serve in several positions, including Director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division and Associate Administrator for Space Science.
As a part of these positions, Huntress oversaw all NASA research missions to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, including missions to Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. Following his work with NASA, he became the director of the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution, and the president of The Planetary Society. He has also worked on the NASA Advisory Council, and is a public advocate for space exploration.
Education and early career
Wesley Huntress was interested in space exploration from a young age, describing himself as a "Sputnik kid" who entered the sciences in college out of an interest in joining the space race between the US and USSR. Huntress was awarded a B.S. in chemistry from Brown University in 1964 and a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Stanford University in 1968. Following his degrees, he began a career as an astrochemist and space scientist Brown University would later bestow an honorary doctoral of sciences degree upon Huntress as well, during its 2005 convocation ceremonies.Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Huntress spent much of his career at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also teaching as a professor at the associated California Institute of Technology. He started at the lab following his PhD as a National Research Council Resident Associate, and joined the lab full-time in 1969 "as a research scientist specializing in ion chemistry and planetary atmospheres" according to NASA. His work there included research into the chemical evolution in interstellar clouds, comets and planetary atmospheres. His positions at the lab included those as "co-investigator for the Ion Mass Spectrometer experiment in the Giotto Halley's Comet mission, as the Coma Interdisciplinary Scientist for the Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby mission, and as JPL Study Scientist for the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite and Cassini missions". He was also a part of the research into molecule formation on Titan, research that was published in 1981 by Nature, as well as ion cyclotron resonance and ion-molecule reactions in off-Earth environments.Video game programming
During the 1980s, Huntress was a video game programmer for the Apple II computer, creating space flight simulators. They were published through Sublogic, Edu-Ware, and Electric Transit. In 1984 he then co-directed the game Wilderness: A Survival Adventure with Charles Kohlhase, a first-person computer game where you are the survivor of a plane crash and have to cross the Sierra Mountains to find a remote ranger's station in order to continue surviving. In 1986, Huntress was a producer on the computer game Lunar Explorer.NASA Administration
Huntress was promoted from the Laboratory to NASA Headquarters in the late 1980s. He first worked as Special Assistant to the Director of Earth Science and Applications, and then served as the Director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division. Upon taking the position, he became an advocate for reforming the Discovery Program for low-cost planetary exploration missions, to make it more cost-effective, including the opening of proposals from private companies to participate in the running of the program, creating a public-private partnership for Solar System exploration. As director, Huntress served as the overseer and spokesperson for the development of NASA's missions to Mars that would take place over the 1990s, and the results of the Magellan probe mission to Venus as well as the Galileo mission to Jupiter. He also founded the NASA Astrobiology program.Huntress was promoted to NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science in 1993. As Associate Administrator, Huntress was in charge of all of NASA's space science programs. Huntress worked within the agency, with White House and Congress, and as spokesperson for the press. Projects for which Huntress was responsible for included the Mars missions he had helped to develop in his prior positions, as well as the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn. He remained in the position until 1998, whereupon he was the recipient of the 1998 Carl Sagan Memorial Award. Over his tenure, Huntress was also awarded the US Presidential Distinguished Executive Award, the NASA Robert H. Goddard Award, a NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and a National Endowment for the Arts design award for the Mars Pathfinder mission.