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A down-to-earth look at the people and technologies powering a new age of planetary exploration.

There are no repair shops on Mars. The machines we send into deep space have to function in the face of violent acceleration, extreme vibration, cosmic radiation, massive temperature fluctuations, rugged terrain, dust storms, and communication delays. Projects unfold over years, sometimes decades. They involve thousands of people, millions of miles, and billions of dollars. No one wants to be the reason a mission fails.

When NASA engineer Kobie Boykins visited the Hilltop as this year’s Schwartz Visiting Fellow, he went to great lengths to emphasize this point. Boykins is best known for his work on rovers designed to crawl across the surface of Mars and spacecraft designed to hunt for signs of life beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s most famous moon, Europa. “The biggest failure that we have,” Boykins said, “is the failure to imagine the things that can fail.”

Over two days in late January, he captured the imagination of students and faculty with stories, lectures, classroom visits, panel discussions, conversations, and meals. His presence was relaxed, funny, and unexpectedly down to earth for someone whose work has helped extend humanity’s reach across the solar system.

“Boykins’ visit was a resounding success,” said Schwartz Visiting Fellow Chair Nina Joly. “Students, faculty, and members of the local community all noted his infectious energy and enthusiasm. He is a gifted speaker, and the nature of his work is awe-inspiring.”

Since 1989, the Schwartz Visiting Fellow Program has brought world-renowned thinkers and creators to Pomfret School. Made possible by the vision and generosity of Michael Schwartz ’66 and Eric Schwartz ’69, the program has welcomed fellows ranging from animal scientist Temple Grandin and celebrity chef Ming Tsai to choreographer Bill T. Jones and historian David McCullough.

In Boykins, Pomfret welcomed a distinguished engineer. As it turns out, it also welcomed a relatable storyteller uniquely suited for this moment.

More than fifty years after Apollo, the Moon and Mars have returned to the center of public dialogue and national ambition. The phrase “space race” once belonged to the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union vied for supremacy in a global struggle for military might and political power.

Today, a second space race is taking shape. This modern incarnation focuses on control of the lunar south pole and Mars. NASA, backed by international coalitions and commercial partners, is competing with state-led programs from China and Russia to extract celestial water, build permanent off-world bases, and claim resource-rich sites.

China plans to land astronauts on the Moon by the end of the decade and hopes to develop a permanent research presence there. The United States is pursuing a parallel future through Artemis, NASA’s campaign to return astronauts to the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars.

Space exploration is still tied to national purpose and scientific discovery, but the new era is being shaped by public-private partnership, with companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin developing launch systems, crew vehicles, and lunar landers alongside NASA.

Pop culture has also taken note. Project Hail Mary was a major box office hit earlier this spring. It was also Pomfret’s summer read. Meanwhile, celebrity astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson has taken over where Carl Sagan left off. Even Bill Nye the Science Guy is back in the public eye.

The renewed interest in space exploration reached a fever pitch in early April when NASA’s Artemis II mission sent four astronauts on a flyby around the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft.

For nearly ten days, the mission captured the nation’s imagination and propelled space exploration back into the national spotlight. The mission did not land on the Moon, but it did something almost as important: it made the universe feel close again.

GROWING UP IN OMAHA, Nebraska, Boykins always wanted to be “that guy who figures out how to design and build things.” After earning a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he joined NASA in 1996, contributing to Pathfinder, the mission that delivered Sojourner, the first rover, to Mars. It was a breakthrough moment in robotic exploration and the beginning of a career that would put Boykins at the center of major Mars missions for the next three decades.

Following the success of Pathfinder, he designed the solar arrays that powered the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, two machines that far outlived their original mission timelines and transformed what scientists knew about the Martian surface. Later, he led the mobility and remote sensing teams for Curiosity, the car-sized rover that landed inside Gale Crater in 2012 and has spent years studying Mars as a once-habitable world.

More recently, Boykins served as chief engineer on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, designed to investigate the ocean and habitability of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa. He is currently working on NEO Surveyor (Near- Earth Object Surveyor), a space telescope specifically designed to discover and track hazardous asteroids and comets that may threaten Earth.

He said the gap between nothing and something, even just a single atom, is greater than the gap between that atom and the universe."James Lake ’27

DURING THE ACADEMIC DAY, Boykins visited advanced physics and engineering classes and offered advice on academic and professional pathways. In conversations with students, he moved easily from the mechanics of rover design to the habits of mind that make good engineering possible. During office hours, Boykins fielded questions about sustainability and emerging challenges in engineering. He also reviewed early-stage designs from Pomfret’s Robotics Team, an experience that echoed his own volunteer work with FIRST Robotics, an organization that runs youth robotics competitions. For students, Pomfret’s classrooms and NASA’s clean rooms suddenly felt much closer.\

“I was really surprised to learn from Mr. Boykins about the similarities between the development of the Mars Rover and the robot I am working on,” said one student. “Both follow a similar development process.”

Boykins did not make space exploration seem easy, but he did make it seem possible. The questions students ask while testing a robot are the same questions that shape missions to Mars, Europa, and beyond. What problem are we trying to solve? How do we improve the design? And always, what could go wrong?

For James Lake ’27, the visit opened an even wider frame. “The most impactful thing he said to me was about theology and the universe. He said the gap between nothing and something, even just a single atom, is greater than the gap between that atom and the universe.”

The second space race is being driven by geopolitics, funded through government investment, and accelerated by private industry. But Boykins reminds us that space exploration always has been, and always will be, about people. Like the namesake of the rover he built, curiosity is a goal unto itself.
 

This story appeared in the Summer 2026 issue of Pomfret Magazine.

 

Banner photo credit: Steve Jurvetson, Wikimedia Commons

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