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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Brian Muirhead worked on various spacecraft and technology projects since coming to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1978. His first job at JPL was building flight hardware on the Galileo spacecraft now in orbit around Jupiter. He led three of JPL's "faster, better, cheaper" developments: the Shuttle Imaging Radar (SIR-C) Antenna Mechanical System (which flew on STS 59 (10/1993), 68 (9/1994) and 99 (2/00); the first Miniature Seeker Technology Integration spacecraft (MSTI-I) Mechanical Subsystems, developed in 6 months and launched in 1992; and the Mars Pathfinder flight system which landed successfully on Mars on July 4, 1997. On Mars Pathfinder he was responsible for the design, development, test and launch of the entire flight system. Following the successful landing he was appointed the Project Manager of Mars Pathfinder. In September, 1999 Brian was appointed Manager for the Deep Impact Project whose mission is to attempt the first ever exploration of the pristine interior of a comet nucleus by flying an impactor into the comet, excavating a crater and examining the ejecta from a separate fly-by spacecraft.
He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1977 and an MS in Aeronautical Engineering from Caltech in 1982. He is the recipient of NASA's Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work on SIR-C and the Exceptional Leadership Medal for his work on Mars Pathfinder. He was named Engineer of the Year for 1997 by Design News Magazine and awarded the 1997 Laureate for Space by Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine. He is the author of "High Velocity Leadership", the Mars Pathfinder Approach to 'Faster-Better-Cheaper' (1999 Harper Business) and "Going to Mars" (2000, Simon & Schuster).