Firouz Naderi is the new manager of the recently established Mars Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA has suffered the high- profile failure of several Mars programs over the last several months, and the board investigating them has found that the agency has tried to carry out missions with too little supervision and poor communications between program managers and headquarters.

Naderi’s primary responsibility will be to coordinate the new office in becoming a single point-of-contact for NASA Headquarters at JPL for all Mars exploration efforts. In addition, the Mars Program Office will work in conjunction with the Mars Directorate Office for the development and implementation of long-term strategy for the robotic exploration of Mars, as well as for the program’s architecture and management of related funding.