Donna Shirley

As program manager for the Mars Exploration Program for NASA, Donna was the original leader of the team that built the highly acclaimed Mars Pathfinder rover, landing a vehicle and several instruments on the surface of the Red Planet in 1997. For that historic mission, Donna also helped oversee the creation of a Website that came to represent a defining moment for the Internet, the first virtual Web connection between the public at large in cyberspace and information being gathered and transmitted from the farthest reaches of outer space.

Donna Shirley, manager of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and original leader of the team that built the highly acclaimed Mars Pathfinder rover, will retire August 21.