How do you retain such talented people for such a long time? These people could get jobs in the most cutting-edge company in their respective fields. Still they choose to stay at the same place for decades.
See: Daniel Pink and the whole autonomy, mastery, and purpose idea. This mission checks those three boxes quite strongly, likely captivating the engineers and folks on the mission :)
I have a friend who works there - brilliant guy who went to school for physics but is also very talented at low level embedded systems type development. When he graduated with a physics masters he turned down a six figure offer to start at NASA at around $60k. From what he's told me though, he's essentially guaranteed to hit the six figure mark within 6-8 years. Last time we spoke he had just started his PhD (paid by NASA) and was working on the Mars 2020 rover.
6 figures in SF/NYC can be less than 60k somewhere else.
No thanks.
> 'The data the probes are collecting are challenging fundamental physics and will provide clues to the biggest of questions: Why did our sun give birth to life only here? Where else, within our solar system or others, are we most likely to find evidence that we are not alone?'