June 26, 2024

Peter Theisinger, whose engineering leadership at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory helped make possible the modern era of Mars exploration, passed away on June 26 after a long illness. He was 78 years old.

Pete, as he was known to friends and colleagues, worked on spacecraft missions to six planets and managed the projects that built the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers. He was influential in starting the Mars 2020 Project that built the Perseverance rover. 

In 2013, Pete was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world alongside JPL colleague Richard Cook for the pair’s leadership of the Curiosity Rover team. As Time put it, “Pete and Richard are the latest heirs of NASA’s long history of building brilliant unmanned spacecraft and dispatching them around the cosmos.” In 2017, he was honored with the National Air and Space Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Trophy for his accomplishments that enhanced our knowledge of the solar system, particularly Mars.

Pete worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for more than 50 years in both technical and management roles. He was a consummate engineer who made substantial technical contributions to the 1967 Mariner mission to Venus, the 1971 Mariner orbiter mission to Mars, the 1977 Voyager mission to the outer planets of the solar system and the 1989 Galileo mission to Jupiter. He moved into management roles starting as the Spacecraft System Engineering Section manager and eventually serving on the JPL executive council as director for Engineering and Science.

His family, friends and co-workers could not have asked for a better, more kind father, relative, in-law and friend. Pete was always checking in with those in his life and made it abundantly clear that he was there to help. If you were interested in something, he would research it, plan it, schedule it and have an itinerary for you before you knew it. He was amazing that way. It was often joked you had to be careful what you said to him unless you were really committed to doing it.

He raised the IQ in whatever room he was in – not just because he was brilliant and had a diverse set of interests that spanned engineering, politics, travel and history. Rather, he made everyone around him smarter because they wanted to be better in front of him. He didn’t demand it; it just happened. You wanted to do your best. He was gracious and often left you with a feeling that his opinion of you was higher than it probably should be.

He is survived by his loving wife Dona, four children: William, Peter Jeffrey, Tracy and Kelly, and granddaughter Sienna.