Aaron Yazzie

b. 1986 · American (Navajo Nation)

Aerospace mechanical engineering

Indigenous AviationEngineeringSpace

WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW THEM

Designed planetary sample-acquisition hardware for the Mars Science Laboratory, InSight, and Perseverance missions

THEIR STORY

Aaron Yazzie is Diné, a member of the Navajo Nation's Ashįįhí (Salt Clan), born in Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 2008, interning at NASA's Goddard and Glenn Research Centers along the way before joining NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that same year. At JPL, his engineering specialty has been planetary sample-acquisition and handling hardware — the actual mechanical systems that let a Mars rover drill into rock and collect a usable sample, a genuinely difficult mechanical engineering problem given the extreme temperatures, dust, and distance involved. He's contributed this kind of hardware engineering to three major missions: the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity), InSight, and the Mars 2020 mission that carries the Perseverance rover — meaning his mechanical designs are physically present on multiple active or historic Mars missions. Beyond his engineering work, Yazzie has been an active recruiter of Native Americans into NASA and STEM careers more broadly, working through the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). He served as president of Stanford's AISES chapter as a student and later became a AISES Sequoyah Fellow, using his own position at NASA to actively bring more Native students into aerospace engineering.

WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DID

As a mechanical engineer, Yazzie designs the physical hardware — drills, sample-collection mechanisms — that let a Mars rover actually reach into rock and bring back a usable sample, engineering that has to work perfectly the first time since there's no repair crew on Mars.

WHAT YOU'RE LEARNING THAT CONNECTS

Designing hardware that has to survive extreme temperature swings and operate flawlessly without any hands-on repair is an extreme version of the same reliability thinking behind aircraft maintenance and pre-flight inspection.

DID YOU KNOW?

His sample-collection hardware designs are part of three separate Mars missions: Curiosity, InSight, and Perseverance.He actively recruits Native American students into NASA and STEM careers through the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.