Professor, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
G. Scott Hubbard has been recognized as an innovator and leader in science, technology and management for more than 35 years – including 20 years with NASA. He currently is a Professor (consulting) in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University where he focuses on planetary exploration, especially Mars and also serves as the Director of the Stanford Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation.
From 2002 to 2006 Hubbard was the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center with an operating budget of $700 million and responsibility for 2,600 people. In 2003 he served full time as the sole NASA representative on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), where he directed impact testing that demonstrated the definitive physical cause of the loss of the Columbia. In 2000 Hubbard served as NASA’s first Mars program director (the “Mars Czar”) and successfully restructured the entire Mars program in the wake of mission failures.Hubbard’s book about this effort, “Exploring Mars: Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery” has just been published by the University of Arizona Press.
He is the founder of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, establishing it in 1998. He conceived the Mars Pathfinder mission with its airbag landing and was the manager for NASA’s highly successful Lunar Prospector Mission. Earlier in his career, Hubbard led a small start-up high technology company in the San Francisco Bay Area and was a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Hubbard has received many honors including NASA’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal. He was elected to the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and also was awarded the Von Karman medal by the AIAA. He has authored more than 50 scientific papers on research and technology. Hubbard received his undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University and his graduate education in solid state and semiconductor physics at the University of California at Berkeley. He continues his 40-year interest in music by regularly playing guitar in a jazz group.
He served as a member of the CCST Council from 2003-2008.