Purdue ECE PhD student Harel Dor earns NASA Early Career Achievement Medal for Mars helicopter work
A Purdue University PhD student who helped operate the first helicopter to fly on Mars has earned NASA’s Early Career Achievement Medal.
Harel Dor, a first-year Purdue ECE doctoral student, has received the honor "for early career achievement operating the Ingenuity helicopter, creating novel operations software features and sequencing techniques to achieve new capabilities on Mars.”
The NASA Early Career Achievement Medal is awarded to government employees within their first 10 years of professional service who demonstrate unusual initiative or creative achievement that directly advances NASA’s mission. Recipients’ work must significantly improve their discipline area and be viewed as outstanding by peers.
While working aat NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Dor played a key role in operating Ingenuity on Mars, helping the helicopter exceed its original technology-demonstration goals. Originally designed for just five flights, Ingenuity ultimately completed dozens of flights, scouting terrain and supporting the Perseverance rover’s exploration of the Martian surface.
Dor was the Deputy Operations Lead on the project. Their work focused on software and operational techniques that allowed the helicopter to safely fly in Mars’ thin atmosphere while navigating challenging terrain, contributions that NASA says substantially improved the field of planetary aerial operations.
“I’m deeply honored to have received the NASA Early Career Achievement Medal,” Dor said. “I will always look back on my time at JPL as a time of immense personal and professional growth, filled with happy memories of some of the kindest and brightest people I’ve ever met.”
Now continuing their journey at Purdue ECE, Dor sees the award not as a finish line, but as a starting point.
“If there’s one thing this award symbolizes to me,” they said, “it’s that our journeys are only just beginning, and there’s no telling where the road will take us.”
Dor’s recognition highlights the growing impact of Purdue ECE students and alumni on space exploration and advanced aerospace technologies on Earth and far beyond it.