Dr. Margarita Marinova is passionate about space and planetary exploration and human missions to Mars, from both the science and engineering perspectives. She has worked to leverage science and technology to further humanity’s reach into our Solar System, improve launch vehicle capabilities and reusability, gain deeper understanding of the Earth and its planetary neighbors, and apply these advancements to improve life on Earth.
Dr. Marinova received her BSc in Aerospace Engineering from MIT, and continued to obtain a PhD in Planetary Sciences from Caltech. She has worked at Airbus Space Propulsion in engine nozzle research and development, and NASA Ames Research Center as a planetary scientist. She was at SpaceX from 2013 to 2020, where she was the propulsion systems responsible engineer for the vertical takeoff and landing F9R-Dev vehicle, vehicle responsible engineer for the reusability program, and senior Mars development engineer working on mission architecture and vehicle design for the Starship vehicle and its planetary missions. Most recently she was the Sr Manager for Integration and Test at Amazon’s Project Kuiper communications constellation. She’s continuing to focus on a variety of projects in aerospace engineering and planetary exploration.