Mars. Photographs from NASA's Archive

Emily Lakdawalla is a planetary scientist, freelance science writer, educator, space artist, and namesake of asteroid (274860) Emilylakdawalla. Her first book, The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job, was published in 2018.

James L. Green, PhD, is NASA's Chief Scientist. In a more than four decades-long career at the agency, where he also served as director of NASA's planetary program, he has led more than a dozen successful missions, including the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars, the New Horizons flyby of Pluto, and the MESSENGER spacecraft to Mercury.

Margaret Weitekamp, PhD, is the chair of the Space History department at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, where she curates the social and cultural history of spaceflight collection. In additional to her scholarly publishing, she also wrote an award-winning children's book about Pluto.

Nikki Giovanni is a writer, educator, activist, and one of America's most prominent poetic voices. She has published numerous collections of poems, essays, and children's books, including Bicycles: Love Poems and Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech.

Rob Manning is Chief Engineer for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well as Chief Engineer for JPL's Engineering and Science Directorate. He has been designing, testing, and operating robotic spacecraft for 40 years including Galileo to Jupiter, Cassini to Saturn, and Magellan to Venus, and many Mars missions.