Ayanna Howard: Robot Wrangler

NASA's twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have already rewritten the book on the Red Planet's history, their amazing discoveries transmitted to an audience of millions. But is not content to let NASA rest on its laurels. She's designing future generations of robotic explorers to bring back even more science for the buck. Her goal: a robot that can be dropped off on a planet and wander around on its own, eliminating the kind of intense supervision from Earth that Spirit and Opportunity require--their every move must be meticulously choreographed in advance and on a daily basis. "I want to plop a rover on Mars and have it call back when it finds interesting science," Howard says.