Born to Ga parents in Accra, he is the chief engineer and technical group leader for the mobility and manipulation group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he has been involved in several Mars missions including the Mars Rover and InSight projects. Meet the first Ghanaian to fly a NASA spacecraftAfter joining the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1999, he became the leader of the team that designed the Mars Rover robot that successfully landed on the red planet. He also worked on the Phoenix spacecraft which discovered water on Mars, and played a key role in the InSight mission which successfully landed on the red planet on Monday, November 26, 2018. “It’s always exciting that you’re going to work on a mission that is going to make the footnote of history. Senegal honours Ghana's James Kwegyir AggreyThe InSight spacecraft is designed to study the interior of Mars, listening for marsquakes and gathering data to understand the planet’s formation.

Source: GhanaWeb April 08, 2026 10:45 UTC