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Spacecraft engineer Nagin Cox and host Harald Dunnink, ready for take-off at Momkai. Nagin has been part of space exploration for 20 years, contributing to interplanetary robotic missions like the Galileo mission to Jupiter and four of the Mars rover journeys. Currently, she leads both the Mars Curiosity and Mars Perseverance missions. It’s an honor to welcome her on the show →

Nagin is a tactical mission lead for the Curiosity Rover, which has been operational on Mars since 2012, as well as the Perseverance Rover, which landed in 2021. Their main scientific goals are to help determine whether Mars could ever have supported life and to study the planet's climate and geology (image: NASA/JPL) →

Nagin Cox calls herself a first-generation Martian. She works a fulltime job on another planet — where each day is 40 minutes longer than on Earth. Working remotely from Earth, that presents some peculiar challenges. Watch Nagin’s inspiring (and funny!) TED talk, with more than 2 million views (image: TED)→

Our journeys to the red planet demonstrates how collective action, driven by a shared vision, can achieve the seemingly impossible. Each team member brings unique insights that, together, form a complex, interdependent system, working toward a common goal (image: NASA)→

The Perseverance Rover was sent to Mars on 30 July 2020 to find evidence of past life on the planet. The visual identity for the mission was designed by House of van Schneider. The minimal logo condenses the red planet, the Earth and the rover into three simple, flat shapes. Get the details on Dezeen (image: Dezeen) →

In 2015, an asteroid was named after Nagin. The discoverers of the asteroid saw a presentation by Nagin in Italy and were so inspired by her stories of exploring Mars, that they decided to name the asteroid after her. The asteroid was discovered on Feb 13 1996 by U. Munari and M. Tombelli at Cima Ekar (image: nagincox.com) →

During the first 90 days of Mars rover missions, Nagin literally lives on Mars time. Since 2004, watchmaker Garo Anserlian has created custom mechanical watches that are based on a day on Mars, which is 24 hours and 39 1/2 minutes. When engineers from nearby NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory first came into his shop, he didn’t believe their request. More on the LA Times (image: LA Times/Raul Roa) →

The Martian sunset, captured on April 15, 2015 by the Curiosity Mars rover. Nagin: “The rover is synced to the Martian day. So it wakes up in the morning, does its activities, then goes to sleep in the Martian night. While the rovers are sleeping, humans on Earth look at what happened on Mars, and plan for what they should do the next day. So that it has its instructions when it wakes up.” (image: NASA/JPL) →

Every mission provides ample research opportunities. Not just about the interplanetary destination, but also the effects on the crew. In this photo series, Designboom showcases 50 years of NASA’s advanced food technology program. The program focuses on meal preparation for space missions – delivering proper nutrition to astronauts, while still balancing appropriate vehicle mass, volume, waste, and cooking times (image: NASA) →

Nagin: “The rover landing is a shared experience. You're sitting in a mission control or in other rooms in other cities and other countries. And it's not just about the mission team. There are groups of interested observers that are gathering at science museums and in Times Square. [...] It's truly a global moment of holding your breath.” (Image: Leslie Mullen on Space.com) →

How did Perseverance, which Nagin lovingly calls Percy, get its name? By getting a nation-wide community of young space enthusiasts involved. Back in 2019, a naming contest brought in over 28,000 essays with name suggestions from K-12 students around the U.S. A group of 4,700 volunteer judges narrowed it down to nine finalists, before NASA picked the final winner: Alexander Mather from Virginia. Read more on Mashable (image: NASA) →

It’s mind-boggling to imagine distances to other planets. This iconic 9-minute documentary by Charles and Ray Eames from 1977 does a wonderful job of conveying just how vast our universe really is. Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, it transports us to the outer edges of the universe, and then all the way back to the smallest atom on Earth (image: Youtube) →

"Imagine a world where the global space race never ended" — this is the premise of For All Mankind on Apple TV+ which I (Harald) highly recommend. Nagin: “I do like For All Mankind quite a bit. And especially the fact that, when they're landing on Mars, I'm like, oh, I know what that would be like. I can kind of watch it from a work perspective.” Watch the trailer (image: Apple) →

The Ingenuity Mars helicopter during a test flight on Mars. Ingenuity was taken to the Red Planet strapped to the belly of the Perseverance rover. Nagin: “We had our Wright brothers moment on Mars: the first time we've ever done powered flight on another planet. It was just a tech demo: one flight was mission success. One flight, because we didn't know if you could even fly on another planet.” See it in action (image: NASA/JPL-Caltech) →

Should we treat other planets like natural resources or national parks? This piece in The New Yorker approaches this moral question from different perspectives, including those of filmmaker Werner Herzog, science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, and the Star Trek franchise (image: NASA) →

The rovers collect soil and rock samples for future return to Earth. Nagin: “From a great distance, you have scientists trying to interpret what they're seeing well enough to select samples that are literally going to be priceless, just like the moon rocks are. They know that when those samples come back, they're going to be doled out to the institutions of the world to collectively decide if we think there was ever life on Mars.” (image: NASA) →

No film imagines life on Mars quite like ‘The Martian’. But how to film a movie on Mars without actually going there? This was the task of Arthur Max, the movie’s Oscar-nominated production designer. His work involved consultations with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scouting deserts with a Marslike feel, and digitally changing the color of the sky from blue to butterscotch yellow. Dive deeper into the process on NY Times (image: 20th Century Fox) →

Harald: I keep a physical Tintin Moon Rocket, from the iconic ‘Explorers on the Moon (1954)’ by Hergé, on my desk at Momkai. It serves as a daily reminder of the power of the collective. When the comic was released in the fifties, it was still just an idea. It was science-fiction. It took 15 more years until Neil Armstrong took his first footsteps on the Moon in 1969. Explore the book (image: © Hergé / Tintinimaginatio) →

Since 2019, NASA’s image and video library has been free of charge. Space fanatics can browse through more than 140,000 high-quality NASA images, videos and audio files from across the agency’s many missions in aeronautics, astrophysics, earth science, human spaceflight and more (image: NASA) →

The image that made the biggest impact on young Nagin and many others was Earthrise, taken by the Apollo 8 crew from the moon in 1968. As Michael Pritchard, programmes director at the Royal Photographic Society in the UK, described it to the BBC: "It's just the perfect image. It provided a perspective of the Earth that had never been seen before. [...] It showed that Earth was this very vulnerable sphere in space." (image credit: NASA). Continue reading →

In 2021, we designed the Dutch cover for the book: “In Light Years There’s No Hurry” by Correspondent Marjolijn van Heemstra. The book explores the ‘overview effect’, a feeling of transformation reported by astronauts who have seen the earth from space: an ethical shift that takes place, a new sense of mission to protect the vulnerable Earth. They come to see themselves as guardians of their home planet, rather than its passive citizens. She explores this in English on the podcast ‘How we live now’ (image: De Correspondent) →

Apart from science instruments, the Perseverance Rover carries symbols and objects ranging from meteorite fragments to the names of 10.9 million people. In NASA lingo, this is called “festooning” the spacecraft. Nagin: “There is a plaque on the Rover that we call our family portrait. It has an etching of Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Percy, and Ingenuity.” Discover what else the Rover is carrying (image: @BillyHix on X.com) → 

The NASA logo, lovingly known as the space ‘meatball’, was designed by James Modarelli in 1959. He began his career as an artist-designer and later joined NASA headquarters as the exhibits chief, charged with developing the agency’s exhibits program. In the picture, we see him overseeing exhibit construction for the Space Science Fair in 1964 (image: NASA). Dive into the history of NASA's logo evolution on Designboom →

Take a virtual tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where Nagin works remotely on Mars. “At the gates of JPL it says: welcome to our universe. I smile every time and I'm reminded of how lucky I am to be able to work where my 14 year old self wanted to.” (image: NASA/JPL)→

This episode came together in partnership with TNW Conference, Europe's leading tech event. Watch an inspiring interview with Nagin at TNW Conference on what she's learned as a female in space engineering and how she shaped her career (image: TNW) →