Adriana C. Ocampo: 1955—: Planetary Geologist

On the Mars Observer project Ocampo was in charge of the thermal emission spectrometer (TES). TES was designed to measure the planet's heat so that cartographers could make more accurate maps of Mars' surface. However the mission failed in 1993 when a malfunction caused the spacecraft to spin out of control and all signals were lost.

On the Voyager mission to the outer planets, Ocampo was a member of the navigation and mission planning team. Her work included the development of the Saturn ephemerides—tables showing the changing positions of Saturn and its satellites—to be used for the Voyager's encounter with the planet. Ocampo also was a co-investigator on the Hermes mission to explore the planet Mercury.

Ocampo was also in charge of the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) on the Project Galileo space probe, as NIMS science coordinator for Galileo's Flight Projects Mission Operations. NIMS was one of four remote-sensing instruments mounted on Galileo for its mission to Jupiter. The space probe was launched in 1989, entering Jupiter's orbit in December of 1995. As it passed the asteroid Gaspra, NIMS scanned its surface, revealing that the asteroid was covered with pulverized rock and dust that was thinner than that of the moon. It also showed that the asteroid's peak temperature was about 230 degrees Kelvin. NIMS measured reflected heat and sunlight from Jupiter's atmosphere, providing data on the planet's composition, temperature, and cloud structure. It also provided information about the mineralogy and surface chemistry of Jupiter's moons. Ocampo was responsible for planning the observations of Jupiter's moon Europa and analyzing the data. She and her colleagues published their work on the surface composition of Europa and Ocampo contributed to a high school textbook that uses the Galileo spacecraft to teach mathematics.