JPL'S ONLY FEMALE PROGRAM HEAD AWAITS MARS LANDING.

Byline: Jane E. Allen Associated Press 

Donna Shirley feels so maternal toward Sojourner, the six-wheeled rover about to take its first steps on the Martian surface, that she's been dreaming about the pint-size spacecraft.

``I dreamed Pathfinder landed on Earth. Last night I dreamed about the manipulator arm on the rover,'' said Shirley, a tireless aerospace engineer who headed the team that developed the 22-pound vehicle. ``I'm pretty fascinated with the rover. It's my baby.''

Shirley, now manager of the Mars Exploration Program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is anxiously anticipating Friday's Mars landing: the ultimate test of the microrover she helped create for $25 million.

The little spacecraft-that-could, named for the African-American abolitionist Sojourner Truth, is so much a part of Shirley's family - and has kept her from home for such long periods - that she says her daughter has sibling rivalry.

Laura Pivirotto, a 20-year-old college student, says it's less sibling rivalry than a recognition that Mom ``considers it her daughter, so what else can I consider it but my sister? She's . . . part of the family. She pays our bills.''

Well, they aren't quite the Jetsons, but when friends take one look at the space memorabilia decorating the family living room, including the Hug A Planet Mars pillow, they often ask Laura if her dad is an astronaut.

``No, my mom's in charge of the Mars program,'' she responds. Her father, who is divorced from Shirley, is a retired JPL engineer.

Shirley, 55, has always been a pioneer. The trait goes back to her childhood in Wynnewood - pronounced Winnie-wood - Okla., where at 6 she decided she'd become a bush pilot. At 10, she announced she wanted to build airplanes when she grew up. She went on to become ``the only girl to take mechanical drawing (and) the only girl not to take home ec.''

On her first day at the University of Oklahoma, she told her adviser she was signing up for aeronautical engineering.

``He said `girls can't be engineers.' I said `yes, they can.' ''

She did. Shirley joined JPL in 1966, working her way from a hands-on engineer to a manager overseeing exploration of the planet she's dreamed of visiting.

She's known for her tenacity. When Congress slashed funding for robotic missions, Shirley was like a mother organizing school bake sales.

``I kept the team together by going out and selling things,'' she said. The systems engineering program they developed for NASA ``brought in enough money to keep this team going,'' she boasts.

When she abandoned Mars work in 1990-92 to be the project engineer for the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft, ``we felt a bit betrayed,'' said rover mechanical engineer Howard Eisen. ``But . . . we believe . . . her idea was the higher she went, the more influence she would have and she could guarantee a future for rovers.''

Today, as the only woman at JPL to manage a program other than human resources, she oversees Mars missions and has assured rovers play prominent roles.

She was responsible for getting the rover aboard Pathfinder.

``She had to fight like crazy to get this rover on the mission,'' Eisen recalled.

Shirley recalls ``a lot of shouting matches'' with project manager Tony Spear. ``(He) was trying to figure out how to just land on Mars, much less take this pesky rover along.''

With Sojourner poised to return color images and chemical analysis of the Martian surface, ``he's now very, very glad he has it,'' Eisen said.

Tall, headstrong and determined, she talked about butting heads with NASA's old guard. She's dedicated to overhauling the way programs are overseen and promoting teamwork.

Despite asserting her power freely, ``she's not power-hungry at all,'' Eisen said. Instead of accepting a prime parking space after her latest promotion, she created a ``Martian of the month'' program that bestows the space to worthy Mars project employees.

``She's very bright,'' said Shirley's boss, Norman Haynes, director of the Mars Exploration Directorate at JPL. ``She's an excellent communicator. She travels around to give a lot of talks. What she's doing is explaining to the public, who are the taxpayers after all, what we're doing with the program.''

Her management successes form the basis of a class she teaches at JPL and of a book: ``Managing Martians and Other Creative Teams,'' that awaits a publisher.

``I'm passing along what I've learned to help other people to be more effective,'' Shirley said.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: (Ran in AV edition only) JPL Mars exploration director Donna Shirley has been engrossed in her space vehicle.

Associated Press