By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati native Steve Lever, who works for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, will help steer the Spirit rover around Mars. (Photo provided)

When the Spirit rover that began beaming color images from the Mars surface Tuesday starts exploring the dusty, red landscape, a Cincinnati native, Steve Lever, will help steer it.

Lever, a computer science specialist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is a member of the team that sends computer commands to the six-wheeled rover across 105 million miles of space.

It will be the most exciting moment of his professional life.

"This job does beat digging ditches,'' said the 42-year-old Cincinnati native, who lived in Hyde Park and Groesbeck before moving to Kettering while he was a fifth-grader at Ann Weigel Elementary School. "And I've dug ditches in my time.''

Lever is among several Ohioans deeply involved in the current Mars mission.

COMPLETE COVERAGE

• Associated Press coverage of Mars Rover • Gallery of Mars photos

Ron Li, a professor of geodetic science at Ohio State University, is leading a team of Ohio State engineering students working with Jet Propulsion Laboratory to gather information about the precise location of the Spirit rover. Researchers at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and its satellite in Sandusky, Plum Brook Station, worked on the rover's air bag landing system.

Lever's job title at NASA's JPL is sequence integration engineer. When geologists and other scientists tell him and fellow engineers what they want Spirit to do - dig a hole, pick up a rock, turn left, turn right - he and his co-workers develop computer command sequences that they pass along to the rover's computer.

"The scientists put their requests together at the end of each Martian solar day,'' said Lever, who lives in Pasadena with his wife and three daughters. "And then we go to work creating the commands to make it happen.''

Once Lever and his teammates move the rover out of its current crouched position later this week, Spirit will be guided toward a dusty crater scientists call Sleepy Hollow, about 40 feet away.

"This mission has been so successful so far, it almost takes your breath away,'' said Lever, who has worked at Jet Propulsion since 1984. "People know here what it is to have a mission fail. That makes this especially sweet.''

Lever has worked on several Mars missions, successful and unsuccessful, since leaving a job as a computer specialist for a California savings and loan to join Jet Propulsion.

He left Ohio after graduating from Kettering Fairmont East High School in 1979 to study computer science at California State University; and he later earned a masters' degree in computer science from Azusa Pacific University.

Once a year, Lever returns to Cincinnati to visit his aunt, Patricia Reams, in White Oak and to go to a Bengals game. Lever has Bengals season tickets, most of which he sells on eBay.

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com