At 14, Terry Himes already knew where he wanted to work. Based on his hobbies, it was an easy decision. Whether examining pictures of galaxies and space or shooting rockets up in the sky in Grand Ledge, Michigan, in the 1960s and ’70s, Himes had his eyes set on exploring space.
“I was kind of gearing my whole education around working for NASA,” Himes says.
He stuck to it. Today, Himes is a spacecraft and software engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He helps NASA communicate with its robotic spacefaring explorers—which means he played one of the many pivotal roles when NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars on February 18.
The mission, dubbed Mars 2020, was not Himes’ first. The InSight lander touched down on Mars in 2018, and the rover Curiosity has clocked more than 3,000 Martian days on the fourth rock from the sun. Himes builds relay commands for all three missions. The Mars 2020 mission became the first to send footage of the landing back to Earth—captivating the globe as it touched down in real time.
Himes was captivated too, and he was right in the thick of it—exactly where he wanted to be. After high school, he attended MSU to pursue a degree in computer science. NASA remained front and center.
“I always thought that Michigan State had a top-notch computer science department,” he says. “It prepared me for the idea that you have to work in teams if you want to get big jobs done. That’s all there is to it.”
When he graduated in 1975 from the College of Engineering, however, the Jet Propulsion Lab was not hiring. He was working at his own company in 1990 when a former colleague reached out: NASA needed help with a spacecraft they were building. So, Himes began working as a consultant on the Mars Observer. He was hired by the Jet Propulsion Lab in 2001 and has been on staff ever since.
Himes remains hard at work. Perseverance’s mission is far from over. Now on the red planet, the rover is collecting Martian rock and soil samples. Himes is on the team that is working to bring those samples—which may contain evidence that life once existed on the planet—back to Earth. The Mars Sample Return Mission is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency that aims to bring pieces of Mars back in the early 2030s.
In the meantime, Himes continues to keep an eye on NASA rovers, landers and orbiters that explore the solar system. Keeping tabs on machines millions of miles away is a busy job. Himes, however, has been ready for decades.
For more on Himes, read a profile at MSU Today.