space program now that manned flight has halted for the time being.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, based in Pasadena, California, announced the appointment last month. Naderi, 65, has been with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory the bulk of his career, having joined it in 1979 at the age of 33.
Naderi’s appointment was largely ignored in the media of the Islamic Republic, which likes to boast of the brains of Iranian expatriates but does not like to point out where the US government gives them responsible positions since that undermines its official ideology that the US government is hostile to Iranians.
Naderi came to national attention in the United States when he was named in 2000 to head the Mars exploration program. The program had suffered two consecutive failures trying to put unmanned explorers on the planet and was being billed as an example of all that was wrong with NASA. Under Naderi, two landers successfully reached Mars and explored for years, sending back more data than anticipated and making Naderi one of the major figures of the space program.
In 2005, Naderi became the associate director for programs, project formulation and strategy at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was in charge of all the US government’s efforts to study the universe from Earth to the most distant galaxies.
That promotion was both a plum and a pat on the back for Naderi, who took over the Mars program when it was under universal ridicule for a succession of costly failures, including one case where a multi-million-dollar Mars probe crashed because someone had given English measurements to a computer set in metric.
His new post has a narrower focus than his last one—the solar system versus the entire universe. But it put him in charge of all the programs that are now the gems of NASA’s operations, given that the last shuttle was retired the day after Naderi was named to his new post.
Naderi was born in Shiraz and moved to the United States at age 20. He holds three degrees in electrical engineering: a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University in Ames; and a master’s and doctorate from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
In naming Naderi to run all solar system exploration, Charles Elachi, the head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said, “Our current challenge is to make planetary missions more innovative, less expensive and yet do great science. I need Firouz to lead a great group of people to make sure JPL retains its global leadership in solar system exploration.”