Mars Student Imaging Project

Keith Watt

Keith Watt began his career as a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with a degree in Engineering Physics in 1988. Upon graduation he attended Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, FL, earning a commission as an Ensign in the United States Navy. After completion of flight school and receiving his Naval Flight Officer wings, Keith was assigned to Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron FOUR (VQ-4), flying EC-130Q Hercules aircraft out of Naval Air Test Center Patuxent River, MD. During a mission to Bermuda (a tough job, but someone had to do it), he was exposed to meningitis, which severely damaged his hearing. He was medically retired from the Navy and began work in the Orbital Mechanics Branch of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, performing mission support for the ASTRO shuttle missions, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF, now called Chandra). While at NASA, Keith volunteered as part of NASA’s Project LASER (Learning About Science, Engineering, and Research) in which NASA employees teach part-time in public high schools. He found that he enjoyed this so much, he decided to get a Master of Education degree from Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. Upon graduation, he enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he earned a Master of Science degree in Astronomy, performing research in the fields of general relativity and gravitational physics. In June of 2001, Keith accepted the position of Assistant Director of the Mars Education Program at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ, where he is responsible for planning and developing curriculum related to the current generation of Mars spacecraft. Keith is married to a Phoenix native; they have a teenaged son and the world’s smartest beagle.