The 14 Most Famous NASA Engineers of All Time

Moon-landing architects, Mission Control legends and a few engineers the internet made famous. Fame and impact don't always line up.

1. 1
   Christopher Kraft

   NASA's first flight director, who built the Mission Control system itself.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Bobak Ferdowsi

   JPL flight director who became internet-famous as 'Mohawk Guy' during Curiosity's landing.
   832pts
3. 3
   Wernher von Braun

   Chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
   718pts
4. 4
   Homer Hickam

   NASA engineer who trained astronauts and wrote Rocket Boys, the memoir behind October Sky.
   636pts
5. 5
   John Houbolt

   Engineer who championed lunar orbit rendezvous, the plan that made the Moon landing possible.
   538pts
6. 6
   Kalpana Chawla

   Aerospace engineer and the first woman of Indian origin in space, lost aboard Columbia.
   538pts
7. 7
   Maxime Faget

   Designer of the Mercury capsule and a key mind behind Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle.
   418pts
8. 8
   Margaret Hamilton

   Led the team that wrote the Apollo guidance software and coined the term software engineering.
   418pts
9. 9
   Mark Rober

   Spent seven of his nine JPL years on the Curiosity rover before becoming a YouTube star.
   418pts
10. 10
    Aprille Ericsson

    Goddard aerospace engineer and the first Black woman to earn a mechanical engineering PhD at Howard.
    418pts
11. 11
    Gene Kranz

    Flight director who steered Mission Control through Apollo 11 and the rescue of Apollo 13.
    0pts
12. 12
    Mary Jackson

    NASA's first Black female engineer, later portrayed in Hidden Figures.
    0pts
13. 13
    Adam Steltzner

    JPL engineer who led the sky crane landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars.
    0pts
14. 14
    Robert Gilruth

    Head of the Space Task Group and first director of what became the Johnson Space Center.
    0pts

Comments 1