Propelling Humankind Forward: Jacob Bleacher ’00

Jacob Bleacher ’00, the featured speaker at Franklin & Marshall College's Commencement May 13, 2023, is the chief exploration scientist in NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) at the space agency’s headquarters. In this role, he is the science advocate for NASA technology and architecture development that is intended to enable human exploration of the moon and Mars.
Bleacher also is the primary contact with NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and the science community outside NASA. His research focuses on understanding the volcanic history of the Earth, moon and Mars by remote sensing mapping. He earned his bachelor’s degree in geosciences at Franklin & Marshall before earning his doctorate in geological sciences at Arizona State University in 2006.
When he began working for NASA in 2006, Bleacher was a research scientist at its Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where he supported the Constellation Program Office to conduct studies examining potential landing sites and developing plans to help define requirements for hardware that would enable travel on the lunar surface. He served as a test subject and crew member for NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies, which focused on field tests of operations for prototype human rovers for the moon. He then led its instrument field team, organizing its planetary science field research deployments, and later was Goddard’s lead exploration scientist, creating awareness of ongoing human exploration projects.

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