Sarah Milkovich

Sarah Milkovich is lead of Science Operations for the Mars 2020 rover at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was investigation scientist for the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Education Milkovich grew up in Ithaca, New York. Here she became interested in astronomy watching TV specials about spacecraft of Nova and PBS, and during vacations in northern Minnesota. She used to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower with her parents. Whilst a high school student, she worked as an intern for the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft. She moved to Brown University, where she earned a master's degree and PhD in planetary geology in 2005.

Career Milkovich joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory after completed her PhD. There she has worked on the Mars Phoenix landing spacecraft, the Cassini–Huygens mission and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE allowed Milkovich and scientists to take turns to choose where images were taken, and took suggestions from the public. She featured on C-SPAN representing NASA to talk about developments in Curiosity.

Milkovich is the lead Science systems Engineer for Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars 2020 rover. The rover is estimated to cost $2 billion.

She regularly appears on online science podcasts and videos. She visits schools and gives public talks to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.