Sarah Milkovich

Milkovich grew up in Ithaca, New York.[1] Here she became interested in astronomy watching TV specials about spacecraft of Nova and PBS, and during vacations in northern Minnesota.[2][3] She used to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower with her parents.[3] Milkovich attended Phillips Exeter Academy, which she graduated in 1996.[4] Whilst a high school student, she worked as an intern for the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft.[3] She earned a bachelor's degree in planetary science at California Institute of Technology in 2000.[5][6] She moved to Brown University, where she earned a Masters and PhD in planetary geology in 2005.[6][7]

Milkovich joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory after completed her PhD.[8] There she has worked on the Mars Phoenix landing spacecraft, the Cassini–Huygens mission and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.[8] Her first rover was Curiosity, for which she was responsible for high-resolution imaging using HiRISE.[9][2] She was most proud of the Mars Science Laboratory parachute image of Curiosity's landing.[10][11][12][13][14][15] HiRISE allowed Milkovich and scientists to take turns to choose where images were taken, and took suggestions from the public.[16] She featured on C-SPAN representing NASA to talk about developments in Curiosity.[17][18]

Milkovich is the lead Science systems Engineer for Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars 2020 rover.[19] The rover is estimated to cost $2 billion.[20]

She regularly appears on online science podcasts and videos.[21][22][23][24] She visits schools and gives public talks to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.[25][26][27][28][8] She has been a keynote speaker at Dragon Con in 2016 and 2018.[29][30]