Anthony “Tony” Spear, a legendary project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory whose team on NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997 found a new way to land safely on the Red Planet, has died.
Spear, who lived in Pasadena for more than 50 years, passed away in La Jolla on June 3. He was 87.
Spear was remembered this week as a leader who thrived on adventure, a key trait for the nascent Mars treks his teams would audaciously embark on.
Donna Shirley, the first female team leader at JPL, was in charge of the rover Sojourner, which hitched a ride with the Pathfinder lander.
“He was willing to take a chance very few people would and he pulled it off,” Shirley said Thursday.
She remembered the five years she spent working with Spear. It was peppered with disagreements, but also respect.
“He and I fought most of the time,” Shirley said. “He just didn’t like the rover (Sojourner) because we were adding to his problems. We made a deal that the rover would carry the Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer and Tony finally accepted Sojourner.”
“Tony was quirky and funny and he was a good people person,” she said.
At JPL, Spear was in charge of all facets of spacecraft development, from flight hardware to computer systems and later helped develop new technologies for future exploration of the outer planets of the solar system.
Robert Staehle, 69, of Altadena, worked with Spear at JPL for about five years. Both were project managers passionate about NASA’s Discovery program of faster, cheaper, better missions. Spear focused on Mars and Staehle on Pluto.
“Tony and I were on similar paths, arguing with the people who said we couldn’t do an outer planet mission for this amount of money, and as it turns out, we indeed accomplished this,” Staehle said. “Tony was best at that. He made the Mars Pathfinder mission happen through personality, intellect and will.”
Both stuck to their guns against much opposition, Staehle said, “and we were called poorly-informed renegades. Tony would have considered that a compliment.”
Born and raised in Martins Ferry, Ohio, Spear joined the U.S. Air Force right out of high school, serving the military from 1954 to 1958. He attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1962. Spear later earned a master’s degree in engineering from USC.
He started working for JPL in 1962, earning a second master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1968 from UCLA. Spear served as manager of the 1989 Magellan mission to map the surface of Venus, managed imaging radar instruments that flew aboard several Space Shuttle missions in the early 1990s, and was an engineer on the 1978 Seasat oceanographic satellite mission.
Rob Manning was the chief engineer on Pathfinder and later rose through the ranks to JPL chief engineer. Today, he is JPL chief engineer emeritus.
“As project manager, Tony Spear created an environment that combined healthy critique and skepticism with deep passion, an insistence on excellence and a sense of fun,” he said. “Together these fostered a wonderful esprit de corps in his team that directly led to the amazing success of Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner Rover in 1997.”
After 36 years on the job, Spear retired from JPL in 1998, a year after celebrating the successful landing of the Mars Pathfinder on July 4, 1997. He spent the time after working as a consultant and traveling the world, including hiking in Nepal.
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Elizabeth Phelps of La Jolla shared two daughters with Spear. Despite their divorce in 1979, the couple remained great friends, spending holidays and family events together. She cared for him the last five years.
“He was an adventurer, he loved to ski and climb and hike,” Phelps said. “He loved his wine.”
Most of all, Spear was a man of integrity, she said.
“He was a great supporter of people, especially people who have had a difficult time in life,” Phelps said. “He would take on people who were perhaps not easily accepted, including women who had a bit of a struggle working at JPL. He was loyal and smart and he was a hard worker. He always said he was driven by fear of not working hard enough.”
A minor planet was named after Spear in 1991.
And Tonyspear 6487 is an asteroid. Appropriately enough, its course crosses the orbit of Mars.
Aside from Phelps, Spear is survived by their daughters Maria and Kristen, as well as four grandchildren. A memorial is planned in La Jolla.
Phelps said the family plans to scatter Spear’s ashes in the hills behind JPL, where he loved to hike.
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