Dr. Moogega “Moo” Cooper

The real-life guardian of the galaxy.

Planetary protection lead for the Mars 2020 mission, keeping Earth’s microbes off the spacecraft we send to other worlds, and bringing that story to stages everywhere.

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Seen on

TEDx

TALKS AT GOOGLE

NETFLIX

SCIENCE CHANNEL

DISCOVERY

Sharing the magic of science

Dr. Cooper shares her joy of science with children and adults around the world, and she stays involved in science outreach initiatives, mostly with K–12 students. She also shares her knowledge through shows like Because Space, How the Universe Works, and Bill Nye Saves the World.

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Who She Is

Dr. Cooper graduated high school at 16, finished her Ph.D. at 24, and went on to lead planetary protection for NASA’s Perseverance rover, a $2.7 billion mission with exactly one shot at leaving Earth clean. Today she supervises a Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group and shares the magic of science with audiences from boardrooms to classrooms.

Read her full story
Dr. Moogega Cooper, NASA planetary protection engineer, smiling while holding a scientific sample with gloves.

What organizers say

The event was truly wonderful, and working with Dr. Moo and your incredible team was an absolute pleasure! Thank you once again for organizing such a successful and impactful experience—Dr. Moo’s takeaways were both insightful and inspiring.

Oh my gosh. She was outstanding. She was so kind and gracious and really connected with our students.

Dr. Moo is absolutely lovely, so energetic and passionate about her work! I loved her presentation and her five take-aways that relate to all careers.

We really can’t say enough good things about Moo…the audience loved her: her enthusiasm, knowledge, down-to-earth (no pun intended) manner. And personally for the board, we found her to be engaging and delightful. Truly a favorite.

Just heard from the Pokemon team and they loved every minute with you and didn’t want to end it.

The Blog

Notes from the clean room

All posts →

The Newsletter

Dispatches from Earth orbit

An occasional letter on Mars, microbes, and making it in STEAM. No noise, no spam.

    How your data is handled →

    Bring Dr. Moo to your stage

    Keynotes, firesides, commencements, and classrooms, from Earth to Mars and back.

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