Mike Caplinger
Michael Caplinger is the systems engineer for the Mastcam-Z camera system for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. He is the senior engineer at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, CA. He started with MSSS in 1990 on the Mars Observer project and has since worked on several Mars orbiters and landers, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Juno mission to Jupiter, the Curiosity Mars rover, the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, and several Earth orbiting missions. He’s currently working on cameras for future missions to asteroids, the Moon, and Saturn’s largest moon Titan. Caplinger has a B.A. in physics and computer science and a M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science, all from Rice University.