# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published October 3, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-14-most-famous-nasa-engineers-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Christopher Kraft** — score 1000/1000
   NASA's first flight director, who built the Mission Control system itself.
2. **Bobak Ferdowsi** — score 832/1000
   JPL flight director who became internet-famous as 'Mohawk Guy' during Curiosity's landing.
3. **Wernher von Braun** — score 718/1000
   Chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
4. **Homer Hickam** — score 636/1000
   NASA engineer who trained astronauts and wrote Rocket Boys, the memoir behind October Sky.
5. **John Houbolt** — score 538/1000
   Engineer who championed lunar orbit rendezvous, the plan that made the Moon landing possible.
6. **Kalpana Chawla** — score 538/1000
   Aerospace engineer and the first woman of Indian origin in space, lost aboard Columbia.
7. **Maxime Faget** — score 418/1000
   Designer of the Mercury capsule and a key mind behind Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle.
8. **Margaret Hamilton** — score 418/1000
   Led the team that wrote the Apollo guidance software and coined the term software engineering.
9. **Mark Rober** — score 418/1000
   Spent seven of his nine JPL years on the Curiosity rover before becoming a YouTube star.
10. **Aprille Ericsson** — score 418/1000
   Goddard aerospace engineer and the first Black woman to earn a mechanical engineering PhD at Howard.
11. **Gene Kranz** — score 0/1000
   Flight director who steered Mission Control through Apollo 11 and the rescue of Apollo 13.
12. **Mary Jackson** — score 0/1000
   NASA's first Black female engineer, later portrayed in Hidden Figures.
13. **Adam Steltzner** — score 0/1000
   JPL engineer who led the sky crane landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars.
14. **Robert Gilruth** — score 0/1000
   Head of the Space Task Group and first director of what became the Johnson Space Center.

Tags: space, nasa, engineering, engineers