Jordan Evans as an undergraduate Aerospace Engineering student at San Diego State University in 1989.
San Diego State University’s 2024 honorary homecoming chair, alumnus Jordan Evans (‘93), is reaching for the stars in his career – quite literally. As project manager for NASA’s groundbreaking Europa Clipper mission, Evans is leading the first-ever detailed study of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.
In NASA’s ambitious space mission, scientists will study Europa’s icy surface and the liquid water ocean under its crust to determine if it is habitable for life. Evans is responsible for the mission's overall technical development, cost and schedule. He leads a team of people from various NASA centers and labs around the U.S., subcontractors in Europe, and fellow Aztecs Amanda (Jeremiah) Thomas (‘96), Anachristina Morino (‘17), Trina Ray (‘95), Bonnie Theberge (‘86), Marlon Hernandez (‘04) and William Chhit (‘19).
Open the image full screen.Jordan in the Mars Yard at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the test versions of all three generations of Mars rovers: Sojourner, Spirit/Opportunity, and Curiosity.
The spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on Monday, Oct. 14, to begin its 5-½ year, 1.8 billion-mile voyage.
Knowing Europa sits in intense radiation that could end the mission in one to two months, Evans and his team worked hard to combat this issue to ensure the mission would survive.
A passion for music and engineering
As much as Evans has a love for aerospace engineering, he also has a love for music. Attending SDSU allowed him to pursue both interests and study both engineering and jazz studies, something that was important to him at the time.
“I played in the Marching Aztecs, the Pep Band, the jazz combos, and the big band throughout my undergrad,” said Evans. “I also had amazing professors who gave me the laboratory experience to build things, test things, and apply the first principles of physics to problems and solutions.”
Evans's internships at SDSU were key to launching his aerospace engineering career. They provided field insights and led to an internship at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where he would spend nearly a decade.
After graduating with a B.A. in Aerospace Engineering in 1993, Evans worked for Northrop on the first production B-2 Stealth Bomber. Longing to work on spacecraft, Evans stayed in touch with his mentor from NASA, and eventually, a job opened up in their mechanical engineering unit, where Evans worked on telescope missions.
He later hopped to another job in the private industry as chief engineer of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope before returning to work again at NASA as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lead Systems Engineer for a Gravitational Wave mission, 22 years ago.
“Every step of the way, my career has been about loving what I do, appreciating the people around me and learning from them, doing the best job I possibly can in what I’m assigned, and communicating to my supervisors and mentors what my interests and ambitions are,” said Evans.
Open the image full screen.Jordan with SDSU alumna Anachristina Morino (‘17) during the NCAA Men’s National Championship game in 2023 when SDSU played UConn.
Evans is no stranger to historic events, including NASA’s Curiosity rover mission in 2012. As a member of the Aztec Mars Science Laboratory team, he spent several years working in various roles from the preliminary design of the system to ultimately landing the one-ton rover on the surface of Mars.
Evans and the team flew the rover, named Curiosity, to a science target on Mars to climb a mountain as tall Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the U.S.
“At that point in my career, that project was the most fun and hardest that I’ve ever been involved in,” said Evans. “The recognition that the “Martian Aztecs” received from SDSU following our successful sky crane landing of Curiosity was humbling and very emotional for me.”
Despite graduating over 30 years ago, being an Aztec is still near and dear to Evans' heart. He serves on the SDSU Aerospace Engineering Industrial Advisory Board and the SDSU College of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Board. He also periodically helps with other SDSU projects, like the planning for the Engineering and Interdisciplinary Sciences Building Complex, completed in 2018.
As a founding member of the SDSU Los Angeles Regional Council, he helps raise scholarship funds and supports the local Aztec community.
Evans’ advice to fellow Aztecs: don’t be afraid to embrace failure. “Our deepest learning comes when things don’t go right, when challenges impede forward progress, or when something just breaks and doesn’t work,” he said. “Taking the time to really understand why something didn’t work is a powerful tool to raise the bar in whatever endeavor you are pursuing.”
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