Beyond Earth: The Quest for Life on an Icy Moon

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courtesy Changemaker Talent

A close-up of Kobie Boykins.

Kobie Boykins

NASA engineer Kobie Boykins knows a lot about the solar system. He’s worked on the Mars rover project, and is leading a mission to send a spaceship to circumnavigate one of Jupiter’s four moons. He’ll talk about why these initiatives are important, and show images and film shot on Mars. It’s part of the Changemaker Speaker Series, formerly Overture's National Geographic Live series.

media release: Explore the next final frontier with Beyond Earth: The Quest for Life on an Icy Moon, as NASA’s Kobie Boykins pivots his search for life on the red planet to life on a cold moon. Boykins’ presentation, on Tuesday, Sept. 19 at 7:30 p.m. in Capitol Theater, is the first in the Changemaker Speaker Series, presented by Overture Center. Tickets ($25-$65) are available at overture.org.

Embark on a journey through more than two decades of space exploration as NASA’s lead principal engineer Kobie Boykins takes us on an epic adventure through its greatest triumphs and challenges. As one of the driving creative minds behind the Mars rovers, Boykins has turned to exploring more distant frontiers. In late 2024, he will lead NASA's most ambitious mission to date: a circumnavigation of one of Jupiter's four moons, Europa, searching for signs of life beneath its icy surface. Through high tech animations, images and film shot by the rovers, Boykins shares why he’s so passionate about his work and believes it’s relevant to life on Earth.

Kobie Boykins became an engineer because he wanted to be “that guy who figures out how to design and build things to function at their highest level.” Well, he’s succeeded. Kobie is a principal mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., where he has worked since graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In more than 25 years at the lab, he has worked on every Mars mission since the Pathfinder mission, which took the first Rover, “Sojourner,” to Mars in 1996. Later, Kobie designed the solar arrays that powered the Mars Exploration Rovers, “Spirit” and “Opportunity.” Those Rovers landed in 2004 and were expected to perform for 90 days, but they lived for six years and 14 years respectively, sending images and data back to Earth and discovering that the surface of Mars once held water.

Next, Kobie led the mobility and remote sensing teams for Mars Science Laboratory rover, “Curiosity,” designing the actuators that powered the 7-ft. tall rover with a 7-ft. arm that operates 10 different tools and 17 cameras, collecting rock, soil and air samples, taking photographs and operating a laser. “Curiosity” launched from Cape Canaveral in November 2011 and landed on Mars in August 2012. This rover also outlived its predicted life and NASA extended its initial two-year mission indefinitely. As of May 2021, it continues to send back images and data.

In 2013, Kobie received a NASA Exceptional Service Medal, one of the highest honors given to NASA employees and contractors. Shortly after, he began his most ambitious project to date, serving as chief engineer on NASA's Europa Clipper mission, slated for 2024, which will send a radiation-tolerant spacecraft into a long, looping orbit around Jupiter to perform repeated close flybys of the icy moon. During the nominal mission, the spacecraft will perform 45 flybys of Europa at closest-approach altitudes, varying from 1,700 miles to 16 miles above the surface. The key question they seek to solve is whether the surface ice holds liquid water beneath it. Where there’s water, there’s the capacity for life. When asked another reason why we need to know this, Kobie says, “From an engineering perspective, we now know Mars had liquid water on the surface, a lot like Earth. Planetary evolution has caused that water to disappear. We need to understand how that happened so that we ensure it doesn’t happen here on Earth.”

Changemaker Speaker Series features the dreamers, builders, makers, problem solvers and wizards among us. These changemakers share insights about the world around us, help us move forward thoughtfully, strive to solve big problems, bridge the distance between us and lift us up, one story at a time.

Next Changemaker Speaker shows:

• Luck is a State of Mind with Deanne Fitzmaurice: Tuesday, Jan. 16, 7:30 p.m.
• Inside Secrets of the Whales with Brian Skerry: Tuesday, April 23, 7:30 p.m.

All Changemaker Speaker shows are approximately 60 minutes with no intermission followed by a 20-minute Q&A session in the theater with the speaker.