Overture Center has announced Beyond Earth: The Quest for Life on an Icy Moon, following NASA’s lead principal engineer Kobie Boykins as he pivots his search for life on the red planet to life on a cold moon. Boykins’ presentation, on Tuesday, Sept. 19 at 7:30 p.m. in Capitol Theater, is the first in the Changemaker Speaker Series. The show will be approximately 60 minutes with no intermission, followed by a 20-minute Q&A session in the theater with the speaker.
The journey covers more than two decades of space exploration. As one of the driving creative minds behind the Mars rovers, Boykins has turned to exploring more distant frontiers. In late 2024, he will lead NASA’s most ambitious mission to date: a circumnavigation of one of Jupiter’s four moons, Europa, searching for signs of life. Through high tech animations, images, and film shot by the rovers, Boykins will share his work and its relevance to life on Earth.
Boykins has worked in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California since graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In more than 25 years at the lab, he has worked on every Mars mission since the Pathfinder mission, which took the first rover, “Sojourner,” to Mars in 1996. Later, Boykins designed the solar arrays that powered the Mars Exploration Rovers, “Spirit” and “Opportunity.” Those rovers landed in 2004 and were expected to perform for 90 days, but they lived for six years and 14 years respectively, sending images and data back to Earth and discovering that the surface of Mars once held water.
Bokins also led the mobility and remote sensing teams for Mars Science Laboratory rover, “Curiosity,” designing the actuators that powered the 7-ft. tall rover with a 7-ft. arm that operates 10 different tools and 17 cameras, collecting rock, soil, and air samples, taking photographs, and operating a laser. “Curiosity” launched from Cape Canaveral in November 2011 and landed on Mars in August 2012. This rover also outlived its predicted life and NASA extended its initial two-year mission indefinitely. As of May 2021, it continues to send back images and data.
In 2013, Kobie received a NASA Exceptional Service Medal, one of the highest honors given to NASA employees and contractors. Shortly after, he began serving as chief engineer on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, slated for 2024, which will send a radiation-tolerant spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter to perform repeated close flybys of the icy moon.
