[5] He co-invented the Ballistic Electron Emission Microscopy system[7] and published several highly-cited papers on metal-semiconductor interfaces,[8][9] for which he received the newly-renamed Lew Allen Award for Excellence in 1990.

[6][10] At JPL, as the supervisor of the Microdevices Laboratory's In-Situ Exploration Technology Group,[11] he developed the concept for the Deep Space 2 micro-landers,[12] which flew to Mars in 1999.

[16][17] Based on that work, Hecht published highly-cited papers on the chemistry of Martian soil and the existence of water on Mars,[18][19][20][21] and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2010.

[22] After almost 30 years at JPL, Hecht was appointed as an associate director of MIT's Haystack Observatory.

[24][25][26] In 2019, Hecht was one of the scientists awarded the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for his work with the Event Horizon Telescope to produce the first image of a supermassive black hole.