COMIC: How living on Mars time taught me to slow down

VPM | By Matthew Cloutier, LA Johnson and Anuj Shrestha

Published July 22, 2022 at 9:01 AM EDT

Updated April 21, 2023

This comic, illustrated by Anuj Shrestha, is inspired by an interview with NASA engineer Nagin Cox from TED Radio Hour’s episode It Takes Time.

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nagin cox 7 col custom 9bf7670e740c4161e40a9f2da8f9210dc6f01718 — / Anuj Shrestha for NPR

About Nagin Cox

Nagin Cox is a spacecraft operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For her current mission, Cox serves as the deputy team chief of the engineering operations team for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. She has also held leadership and system engineering roles on robotic missions including the Galileo Mission to Jupiter, the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the Kepler Exoplanet Hunter, the InSight Mission to Mars, and the Mars Curiosity rover.

Prior to joining NASA in 1993, she served six years in the U.S. Air Force, including duty as a space operations officer at NORAD/U.S. Space Command.

Cox received her master’s in space operations systems engineering from Air Force Institute of Technology and two bachelor’s in engineering and psychology from Cornell University.

This segment of TED Radio Hour was produced by Matthew Cloutier and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Twitter @TEDRadioHour and email us at [email protected].

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Matthew Cloutier

Matthew Cloutier is a producer for TED Radio Hour. While at the show, he has focused on stories about science and the natural world, ranging from Mars rovers and failed telescope launches to exploring Antarctica's hidden life and 3D scans of the planet. He has also pitched these kinds of episodes, including "Through the looking glass" and "Migration."

Cloutier began in January 2020 with an internship for TED Radio Hour, following which he expanded into social media and audience engagement, including a series of activities and lessons to pair with show segments. He began regularly producing segments for the show in the fall of 2020.

Prior to NPR, Cloutier worked for the greatest radio station in the world, the independent WPKN in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

He graduated from Middlebury College in 2019 with a degree in environmental studies and never outgrew his childhood obsessions with dinosaurs, moths and sea life. Accordingly, he often succeeds in working into conversations that summer he did necropsies on an island owned by unitarians.

See stories by Matthew Cloutier