PASADENA, Calif. Ashwin Vasavada knows he has some pretty big shoes to fill.

Vasavada is the newly appointed project scientist for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, in charge of a team of nearly 500 researchers spread around the globe. He succeeds John Grotzinger, who steered Curiosity to some big finds over the past few years including the discovery that Mars could have supported microbial life in the ancient past.

"It's a big step to lead this large team; there's nobody else anymore. The buck stops with me," Vasavada told Space.com with a wry chuckle. "The pace of success and scientific achievement have been so great that it makes one a bit nervous about keeping it up!" [Curiosity's Biggest Discoveries (So Far)]

The car-size Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2012 under Grotzinger's leadership. Vasavada who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) here in Pasadena was a deputy project scientist until now.

In that role, Vasavada had focused on science operations. He has worked on Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) for more than a decade and knows the rover and its subsystems like few others.

"I had focused very strongly on operations in the last few years. Making sure that everything operated smoothly took up the bulk of my time," he said. "You have to 'feed' the rover every day, and it's an incredibly complex process, analyzing the data and working with the engineers to maximize the science returns. There are a hundred questions every day and potential problems to keep in check. "

Generally speaking, the project scientist facilitates the work of Curiosity's nine principal investigators (PIs). Each PI is attached to an instrument onboard the rover. [A 'Curiosity' Quiz: How Well Do You Know NASA's Newest Mars Rover?]

"John had been doing a lot of the data-analysis side, keeping track of all the different things that people were working on and prompting them to pursue different lines of research," said Vasavada, who has a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). "He made sure that collaboration was occurring and managed interactions between team members. I'll be doing a lot more of that now."

A 'Curiosity' Quiz: How Well Do You Know NASA's New...

NASA's Curiosity rover the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission landed on Mars Aug. 5. How much do you know about Curiosity and its mission?

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NASA's New Curiosity Rover Science Chief Takes Charge On Mars