Of the eight planets in our solar system, Jupiter is by far the largest. Its volume could contain 1,300 planets the size of Earth.

In August 2011, NASA will launch from Cape Canaveral its long-awaited Juno mission to orbit the massive globe of dense gases in search of new scientific understanding. Previous missions have flown past Jupiter, including in 2007, the New Horizons mission to Pluto (which is still en route, expected to reach Pluto in 2015). But only one previous mission, Galileo (1995–2003), has repeatedly orbited Jupiter.

As NASA Headquarters’ program executive for the science mission directorate, CSUN alumna Adriana Ocampo Uria, MS ’97 (Geology) is responsible for both the Juno and New Horizons missions. She has been professionally dedicated to geological research for more than three decades.

As a child in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ocampo Uria remembers constantly gazing at the stars and playing “astronauts” instead of “dolls.” After moving to the United States at age 14, her passion for space exploration flourished. In 1973, still in high school, she landed a summer job at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. She worked at JPL throughout college and then as a research scientist from 1983 to 1998. She earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from Cal State Los Angeles in 1983 and a master’s degree in geology at California State University, Northridge in 1997. She received CSUN’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2008.

The upcoming NASA Juno mission seeks to improve the understanding of Jupiter’s formation and structure, ultimately advancing the knowledge of the origins and early evolution of the solar system. After a five-year journey, Juno should reach Jupiter in 2016.

The combined missions to Jupiter and Pluto mark a new career milestone for Ocampo Uria. But her work does not end there. Ocampo Uria also serves as the lead Venus scientist responsible for NASA’s collaboration in the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission (launched in 2005), Japan Aero­space Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Venus Climate Orbit (launched in 2010), and NASA’s own Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG).

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