Q&A with Donna Shirley

An IEEE Spectrum Radio Program

IEEE Spectrum Radio
10 minutes, 4.8mb, recorded 2007-07-01
Donna Shirley

Science fiction has had tangible impact on the actual course of science and engineering. Donna Shirley, who works at NASA's Mars Exploration Program, was one such engineer affected by "The Sands of Mars", by Arthur C. Clarke. On this edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio, Shirley talks about the effect of Clarke's work, and her career at NASA.

Shirley decided to venture into the field of aeronautical engineering when it was primarily male dominated territory. Girls were expected to act a certain way, but all that changed after her first exposure to engineering and science on another planet.

Though Clarke's works had no major female characters to speak of, and his assumptions about life on Mars turned out to be wildly off, some of his ideas about terra-forming and making life possible far from Earth have been hugely influential.

This program was originally broadcast on IEEE Spectrum Radio.


Donna Shirley worked as a spec writer in St. Louis before winning a job with NASA. She worked on the very first unmanned mission to Mars in 1966 and continued her association with Mars research, a devotion that came to splendid fruition on July 4, 1997. The entire world watched as the Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner Rover successfully landed on Mars. Two months later the Mars Global Surveyor successfully went into orbit around the red planet. Not only were these events two of the U.S. space program's greatest successes, but they may well provide the world with some of the most important scientific data of the 20th and 21st centuries.

This free podcast is from our IEEE Spectrum Radio series.

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