I grew up in a Mennonite community, but my passion was space. I loved anything to do with space and technology--my brother and I built and launched model rockets as kids; when I was eleven years old, we built a telescope in time to sketch the features of Mars during its close approach. Little did I know at the time that God would have me exploring Mars for most of my life. During my college years I expected that God would lead me into a third world job where I could be a Christian influencer in another culture. However, God kept steering me back to academia. So I got a PhD in Physics with a thesis studying Mars rocks that arrived on Earth as meteorites. I did a short postdoc, still looking for third world opportunities, but my job ended suddenly and I took the only opportunity that I could find--a research job at Caltech. What I thought was a dead-end research direction God turned into a leading role developing instruments on NASA's Genesis mission. While that mission was in flight, through some very unusual circumstances, NASA selected me to lead a laser-based instrument (ChemCam) for the 1-ton Mars rover Curiosity. The path led through cancellation, a fire, a crashed spacecraft, and other disasters, but was ultimately successful (what an amazing God we have!). These stories are compiled in the book, Red Rover, published by Basic Books in 2013. With this success, NASA selected my next instrument, SuperCam, for its next rover, Perseverance. My teams are still operating both instruments on Mars. In the late 2010s, God led me to seek a transition to academia, where I would have much more contact with humans. I brought my Mars exploration with me to Purdue, where I now mentor students exploring the red planet and teach classes on Mars and on instrument development for NASA. I have authored over 300 papers, been knighted, have an asteroid named after me, and am working on my next Mars book. Most exciting is to see God at work among students and faculty at Purdue. I am the faculty advisor for an on-campus group that meets monthly to discuss topics at the intersection of Christianity and STEM. These include how God teaches us about himself through science and nature, how mathematics points us toward God, how a Christian priest was involved in the discovery of the Big Bang, how God has endowed us with meaning and purpose even with evolution, and whether God created life on Mars and other worlds. Our campus ASA organization is associated with national Christian organizations called the American Scientific Affiliation (asa3.org) and the Society of Catholic Scientists (catholicscientists.org).