مهتاب عشق

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Dr. Firouz Naderi
Director, Solar System Exploration Programs
and Mars Exploration Program Manager

Dr. Firouz Naderi is JPL's associate director for programs, project formulation and strategy. Before this appointment, he was the head of Mars exploration, a program aimed at searching for past or present life on the Red Planet. During his tenure, three successful missions orbited or landed on Mars including the two recent Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Before Mars, he managed NASA's Origins program with the ambitious goal of finding other Earth-like planets around other stars. Naderi, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, has been with JPL since 1979, with a career spanning program and project management for satellite communications systems, Earth remote sensing observatories, astrophysical observatories and planetary systems. Naderi has received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and Outstanding Leadership Medal, the Space Technology Hall of Fame Medal and the Liberal Prize from an Italian foundation, awarded to an international personality who has "contributed profound changes in ideas in modern times." Two years earlier this prize had been awarded to Cardinal Joseph Ratziner, now Pope Benedict XVI.