New director of NASA’s storied Jet Propulsion Lab takes on ballooning mission costs

One of the world's leading labs for robotic space science has a new leader. JPL is readying several more flagship missions for NASA, including a probe of Jupiter's icy moon, and a complicated campaign to gather the rock samples collected by Perseverance.

Leshin was the president of the WPI, an influential engineering focused university in Massachusetts. She has served in leadership roles at the agency, including at its headquarters. Leshin studies the presence of water and meteorites.

After a few weeks on the job, she caught up with science. The interview has been edited to make it clearer.

Q: While at WPI, you took steps to improve representation of women and people of color. What did you do there, and do you hope to take similar steps at JPL?

A: On my first day at WPI, there was a folder on my chair with the results of a faculty climate survey which showed that only a small percentage of women faculty were satisfied with our promotion to full professor. The percentage is zero. It seems like a mandate to change. It took a long time. The definition of scholarship was expanded by us. We value project-based learning and work in the real world. Our criteria were similar to a research university. We left it up to the faculty to tell us what those ways were, as we expanded the definition of what scholarly work entails. A group of faculty who were doing work that was well aligned with the institutional values but wasn't counting toward promotion were promoted.

We gave what were previously nontenure track faculty a path to tenure. Faculty in contract teaching jobs are more diverse. There are advantages to that. Fix systemic issues in diversity by talking about them. The system needs to be changed.

Q: And JPL?

The journey is being taken by JPL. The initial plans were put together a few years ago. The leader of inclusion efforts has been hired for the first time and she is fantastic. It is possible to revisit how we have people advance in the organization.

Representation is something I know about. Being the first woman to hold this position in 85 years makes a difference. The women in the lab wrote me an e-card that was signed by 500 people. It is touching that my appointment is important to them.

Q: JPL has an incredible record of success in robotic missions. But you’ve had a lot of cost overruns with the Mars rovers, and we’re seeing it again with Europa Clipper, which will now cost an estimated $5 billion. What steps can JPL and other centers take to stop getting surprised by cost increases?

An issue that is high on my agenda is being raised by you. At JPL, the technical performance was amazing. We have not done well on cost. Why is that happening? The answer is complex. It can be difficult to write down all the requirements early on. How do we find out where we are missing?

We spend American taxpayer dollars here, so I want people to know that I take it seriously. When missions don't meet their cost milestones, that means something else is getting delayed because as far as I know, there aren't infinite resources

Q: Mars Sample Return will require three spacecraft launches and two landings on Mars to grab the Perseverance rock samples, including a rocket launch back off the martian surface. The project is likely to cost more than $7 billion, split between NASA and European partners. What is your pitch to the taxpayer on why this audacious project is needed?

I wanted to come to JPL because we are finally going to do this mission. I've been trying to bring this to fruition for 25 years. It's exciting to know that we are on the doorstep of making that happen. The samples we are collecting look amazing, and the ones to come will be even better.

There is no substitute for labs on Earth to tear these rocks apart, atom by atom, molecule by molecule. We don't want to answer the question of whether or not there has been life on Mars with a rover. You get a surprise when you do an experiment with instruments on Earth. You have to make a completely different kind of measurement. If you are on a rover, you have to wait 20 more years for a different kind of instrument that you can miniaturize to fit on a rover. You can test hypotheses in real time in a different type of lab on Earth. We will get definitive answers to the question of whether or not there is life on Mars by using this method. Life is common if there was life next door.

Q: Since the end of Apollo, exploration of the Solar System has primarily been the domain of robots. But now, with Artemis, NASA has credible plans to return astronauts to the Moon. What role do you see JPL playing in human spaceflight?

The Deep Space Network, the communication system for NASA, which Artemis is going to be using, is the main part of our role in the robotic space realm. As we build out the human infrastructure in space, there are a lot of ways that humans androbots can work together.

Q: JPL built the first CubeSats to visit another planet, Mars Cube One, a communications relay that helped with the InSight landing in 2018. What role do you see smaller, riskier missions playing in the lab’s future?

With all of the launch vehicle providers, there is an opportunity to have a more frequent flight rate. There are more opportunities to ride to space with small things. We need to use that for both science and technology. It is difficult to get things space-proven when we get things in the lab. Increased flight opportunities give us more time to mature technology.

Q: JPL also develops tools for observing Earth from space. And in this realm we’re seeing a lot of commercial investment and competition. How can JPL leverage this activity?

To succeed, we need to work with the commercial entities. The Carbon Mapper is an example of that. The instrument is a hyperspectral one. This is not a NASA mission. It is being funded in a philanthropic way. The data will be given away so anyone can see who the big emitters are.

The private sector is committing to do more builds and we are transitioning technology out into the private sector. It is going to be on the cutting edge after I visited that last week. It allows us to push the boundaries, which is what JPL is good at.

Q: The number of countries and companies operating in space has drastically increased in the past decade. What’s the role for JPL and the traditional NASA centers in this new reality?

JPL's experience in doing first-of-a-kind, incredibly challenging things in distant worlds is going to be incredibly useful when it comes to things that are mostly governmental. We should be partnering more with universities, companies, and other organizations in order to get those done.

Q: Stepping back from programmatics for a minute, you spent your research career focused on the fate of water in the Solar System. What related results have gotten you the most excited recently?

Where Perseverance is right now is exciting to me. Being at the delta and looking at the images and imagining the water environment, and just hoping that the rocks have captured and preserved it. I do not have that result. That is the result that I am most looking forward to. I am excited about the Europa Clipper. What are they going to discover about this ocean? There is a good chance that we will find out that we want to go back and land on that ice sheet.