Sydney do

Background

About Sydney do

Dr. Sydney Do is a Systems Engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he supports the development and operations of current and future robotic and human Mars missions. Currently, he supports two robotic Mars missions and manages studies that will feed-forward into future human Mars mission planning. For the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return (MSR) Campaign, Sydney serves as Mission Systems Engineer and Terrain Interactions Lead, where he manages landing and sample depot site selection and certification for the Campaign. Recently, he coordinated the successful construction of Three Forks Sample Depot on Mars, where ten samples were carefully deposited on the Martian surface for potential future return to Earth. In addition to MSR, Sydney serves as a Tactical Downlink Lead for the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover, where he manages the day-to-day assessment of rover health to inform tactical mission planning. In between these missions, he leads NASA’s Mars Water Mapping Projects, a multi-year series of studies aimed at mapping water distribution across Mars to inform landing site selection for the first human missions to Mars. Previously, he has worked on the International Mars Ice Mapper and ESA’s Sample Fetch Rover mission concepts. Beyond robotic missions, he has also worked in the areas of Mars crewed surface systems architecting, space habitation and life support, space logistics, and crewed spacecraft landing systems. He holds Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in Aerospace Systems Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia. He was awarded the 2021 NASA Early Career Achievement Medal for his contributions to Mars Sample Return.