Anthony Spear was an American space exploration project manager most notable for leading the Mars Pathfinder mission for JPL/NASA in 1996.

[2] He competed for the Google Lunar X Prize with Red Whittaker, Astrobotic, and Carnegie Mellon University, where he received a B.S.

He first started out in Deep Space Telecommunication System Engineering where he was involved in the design and development of NASA's Mariner program missions from 1964 to 1973.

He also helped design the lander-orbiter relay communications link for the Viking program mission in 1976.

From 1975 to 1979, he began to manage the development and implementation of the microwave instruments for the NASA SEASAT mission, including the first synthetic aperture imaging radar to fly in space.