Susan G. Finley

Susan G. Finley is an American engineer who joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in January 1958, just days before the launch of Explorer 1, and has since become the longest-serving woman in NASA's history. She began her career as a human computer, performing trajectory calculations for rocket launches by hand, before the laboratory transitioned to electronic computing; she then became a FORTRAN programmer and eventually a subsystem engineer for NASA's Deep Space Network, the system of antennas used to track and communicate with spacecraft across the Solar System. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Finley has contributed to missions exploring the Moon, the Sun, every planet in the Solar System and other bodies, including work on the Venus Balloon Project, the Mars Exploration Rover missions and the Juno mission to Jupiter.