Timothy Canham is an American software engineer. He works at the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA ...

(JPL), where he is the operations lead and former software lead for the

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmos ...

helicopter ''

Ingenuity Ingenuity is the quality of being clever, original, and inventive. Ingenuity may refer to: * Creativity, the phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed *Ingenuity (helicopter), a helicopter on Mars * Ingenuity (Crespi), a painting * I ...

''. He resides in

Santa Clarita, California Santa Clarita (; Spanish for "Little St. Clare") is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-largest city by population in Los Angeles County, the 17 ...

Education

Canham attended

Marcus Whitman High School Marcus Whitman High School is a middle/ high-school located in Rushville, New York. It is part of the Marcus Whitman Central School District. The school was named after Marcus Whitman, the famous missionary and physician. The middle and high s ...

Rushville, New York Rushville is a village in Ontario and Yates Counties in the U.S. state of New York. The population was 655 in the 2019 American Community Survey. Most of the Village of Rushville is within the Town of Potter in Yates County and a small part is ...

and

Clarkson University Clarkson University is a private research university with its main campus in Potsdam, New York, and additional graduate program and research facilities in the New York Capital Region and Beacon, New York. It was founded in 1896 and has an en ...

, where he graduated in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering.

Career

Upon graduating from Clarkson University, Canham applied for a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and has worked there ever since with the exception of one year off in the 1990s. Prior to his work on ''Ingenuity'', Canham developed software that resulted in the successful landing of ''

Curiosity Curiosity (from Latin '' cūriōsitās'', from ''cūriōsus'' "careful, diligent, curious", akin to ''cura'' "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human ...

''. He is an architect of the Fprime flight software framework, used in many JPL projects including ''Ingenuity''. Canham started working on the ''Ingenuity'' project in the summer of 2015, building a prototype of the helicopter to "test the basics" with a team of up to 20 people. The helicopter was selected to be taken on the ''

Perseverance Perseverance may refer to: Behaviour * Psychological resilience * Perseverance of the saints, a Protestant Christian teaching * Assurance (theology) Geography * Perseverance, Queensland, a locality in Australia * Perseverance Island, Seychelles * ...

'' rover to Mars in 2017. In a February 2021 interview with

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

, Canham revealed that the helicopter would be using a

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

operating system with open-source code and a

Snapdragon ''Antirrhinum'' is a genus of plants commonly known as dragon flowers, snapdragons and dog flower because of the flowers' fancied resemblance to the face of a dragon that opens and closes its mouth when laterally squeezed. They are native to ...

801 processor board and 500-hertz guidance loops. The ''Perseverance'' rover, which carried ''Ingenuity'', landed on Mars on February 18, 2021 as part of the

Mars 2020 Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission forming part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the rover '' Perseverance'', the small robotic, coaxial helicopter '' Ingenuity'', and associated delivery vehicles. Mars 2020 was launched from ...

mission; on April 19 of that year, ''Ingenuity'' completed the first ever powered, controlled extraterrestrial flight of an aircraft, which lasted 39.1 seconds. In addition to developing and operating spacecraft, Canham has participated in outreach activities at universities to assist students. The ''Ingenuity'' team, which includes Canham, earned the 2021 John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr. Award for Space Exploration from the

Space Foundation The Space Foundation is an American nonprofit organization whose mission is to advocate for all sectors of the global space industry through space awareness activities, educational programs, and major industry events. It was founded in 1983. Lo ...

. In 2022, the team was awarded the

Collier Trophy The Robert J. Collier Trophy is an annual aviation award administered by the U.S. National Aeronautic Association (NAA), presented to those who have made "the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to im ...

by the

National Aeronautic Association The National Aeronautic Association of the United States (NAA) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and a founding member of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). Founded in 1905, it is the oldest national aviation club in the Un ...

"for the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet, thereby opening the skies of Mars and other worlds for future scientific discovery and exploration."

Scientific publications

*Dan Dvorak, Greg Bollella, Timothy Canham, et al
Project Golden Gate: towards real-time Java in space missions

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

. May 24, 2004. Retrieved May 28, 2022. *David Henriquez, Timothy Canham, Johnny Chang, and Elihu McMahon
Workstation-Based Avionics Simulator to Support Mars Science Laboratory Flight Software Development
June 15, 2012. Retrieved May 27, 2022. *Garth Watney, Leonard J. Reder, and Timothy Canham
Modeling for Partitioned and Multi-core Flight Software Systems: (Instrument Software Framework)

. December 11, 2014. Retrieved May 27, 2022. *

Bob Balaram J. "Bob" Balaram (born 6 November 1961) is an Indian-American scientist and engineer currently working for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He is the chief engineer and designer of ''Ingenuity'' (project name: ''Mars 2020'' helicopt ...

, Timothy Canham, Courtney Duncan, Håvard F. Grip, Wayne Johnson, Justin Maki, Amelia Quon, Ryan Stern and David Zhu
Mars Helicopter Technology Demonstrator
''Aerospace Research Central.'' January 7, 2018. Retrieved May 27, 2022. *Robert Bocchino, Timothy Canham, Garth Watney, Leonard Reder, and Jeffrey Levison
F Prime: An Open-Source Framework for Small-Scale Flight Software Systems

Utah State University Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public land-grant research university in Logan, Utah. It is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. With nearly 20,000 students living on or near campus, USU is Uta ...

. July 19, 2018. Retrieved May 27, 2022. *Canham, Timothy
Mars Helicopter: Leveraging Commercial Hardware and Open Source Software
2019. Retrieved May 27, 2022.

Lectures

*Farah Alibay and Timothy Canham
Helicopters in Space (live public talk)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. March 11, 2021. Retrieved May 27, 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Canham, Timothy NASA people Living people American software engineers People from New York (state) People from Santa Clarita, California Clarkson University alumni Jet Propulsion Laboratory 21st-century American engineers Mars 2020 Year of birth missing (living people)

Education

Career

Scientific publications

Lectures

See also

References