Wayne Lee has been serving as the Chief Engineer for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission's Entry, Descent and Landing system, EDL, which comprises the parachute, rockets, and airbags that are designed to bring the spacecraft from a speed of 12,000 miles per hour as it reaches Mars, to a complete stop on the surface - all within 6 minutes. After his work on the Mars Exploration Rovers mission is complete (likely some time later in Fall 2003) he will transition to a line management position in which he will be responsible for staffing JPL's future missions to Mars.

In a career that has combined engineering, mathematics and management, Wayne was previously a mission planner at NASA's JPL, where he designed trajectories: he worked on both the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Pathfinder missions. Previously he was an Instructor at the Kennedy Space Center, and at the University of California.

During the Mars Pathfinder mission he was the mission planner for Mars operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. During the mission, he worked with all the elements of the flight team to coordinate trajectories, science plans and spacecraft operations into the overall mission itinerary.

I'm originally from San Diego, Calif., I'm 34 years old, and I have degrees from Berkeley in electrical engineering and from the University of Texas in astronautics. He published a book on spaceflight mechanics for the layperson.