ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. Gail ThomasAndrea Gail Thomas received a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles (California) in 1981 with a major in music. She began her career at JPL in 1984 in the Parts Reliability Section but soon moved to the Spacecraft Telecommunications Equipment Section, now the Flight Communications Systems Section.
She worked on ground support equipment (GSE) hardware and software for the Cassini telemetry control unit. She more recently worked on the GSE software for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) and the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) telecommunications subsystems.
Ms. Thomas began working in MER flight operations as a "data miner" during the MER prime mission, then transitioned to become a telecom analyst during the first MER extended mission in 2004, and most recently became a telecom analyst for Cassini. She has also served as the telecom lead in subsequent MER extended missions through 2007.
Co-Author of Chapter 7 from Volume 13 of the Deep-Space Communications and Navigation Series:
Mars Exploration Rover Telecommunications
Co-Author of the following articles of the DESCANSO Design & Performance Summary Series - Telecommunications: