David M. Nelson, M.S. Geology (Planetary Science), ASU, 1997; B.A. Geography, San Diego State University, 1990

David is a Research Associate and Mission Operations team member for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) at Arizona State University. He is also currently a graduate student working on a Ph.D. in Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences at ASU. His earliest memories of space exploration are when his parents sat down with him, his brother and sister in front of the TV to watch the Apollo landings in the late 60s and early 70s. Since then he has followed the progress of the U.S. space program and always wanted to be a part of its continuing mission. When the United States began its robotic exploration of Mars in the early 90s, he decided to pursue his goal to become a part of the space exploration program and he entered into the graduate school in geology at ASU.
Under his advisor, Dr. R. Greeley, David received his M.S. in Geology. His thesis described the surrounding geology of the Mars Pathfinder landing site at the mouth of Ares Vallis (a 40km wide outflow channel that might have been carved by a torrent of floodwaters that flowed from a Martian aquifer). This paper was subsequently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Nelson and Greeley, JGR, April 1999). Following his Masters program, he remained with Dr. Greeley as a Senior Research Specialist where he researched and mapped the Gusev crater region for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit, as well as several other potential landing sites including Eos Chasma (see Greeley et al., JGR, Dec. 2003), helped plan several proposals for scout missions to Mars, and compiled camera targets for the High Resolution Stereo Camera for the European Mars Express mission.
He is currently working on a dissertation in the School of Geographical Sciences at ASU that focuses on the accuracy assessment and quantification of error in the classification of features in satellite images. Such research will be important in the mapping of the lunar surface when the United States performs detailed studies of past and future landing sites of manned missions. His duties as a LROC Mission Operations Team member will be to plan camera targets throughout the active mission, to process the images for scientific use, and to analyze the images for mapping and the identification of future potential landing sites.