Mark Rober, a Former NASA Scientist Turned YouTuber Content Creator That Engineered Glitterbomb Packages

Mark B. Rober is a 40-year-old American YouTuber, engineer, and inventor. He is well-known for his viral YouTube videos on popular science and do-it-yourself gadgets.

But before he was a content creator on YouTube, Rober was an engineer with NASA for nine years, where he spend seven of those years working on the Curiosity rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

After NASA, he spent 4 years at Apple Inc. as a product designer in the company's Special Projects Group, where he authored patients involving virtual reality in self-driving cars.

Rober's NASA Career

Rober designed and delivered hardware on several Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission, including AMT, GRAIL, SMAP, and Mars Science Laboratory, according to Distractify.

While working at NASA, he was one of the primary architects for JPL Wired, which was a comprehensive knowledge capture wiki. He also published a case study about applying wiki technology in a high-tech organization to develop an Intrapedia for the capture of corporate knowledge.

YouTube Channel

Rober started making viral videos while he was still working at NASA. His videos mostly cover a wide variety of topics, including ideas for April Fools' Day pranks.

Rober established his channel on the platform in October 2011. His first video featured him using two iPads to create the illusion of seeing through his body to create a gaping hole in torso, which is his idea for a costume for Halloween.

The video received 1.5 million views in just one day.

However, what really cemented his YouTube career was his infamous Glitterbomb packages set to target thieves.

In December 2018, Rober posted a video showing how he tricked numerous parcel thieves with an engineered contraption that sprayed glitter on the thieves, emitted a foul odor, and captured videos of the porch robbers.

The video went viral, getting 25 millions views in just one day.

Nevertheless, he removed two of the five incidents that were caught on tape after discovering that two of the three thieves were friends of a person that he hired to help catch the package thieves, according to CNBC.

In December 2019, he teamed up with Macaulay Culkin and featured an improved design. After a year, in December 2020, he posted a follow up and featured a third edition of the glitter bomb.

Rober collaborated with Jim Browning last year, ScammerPayback, and various state and federal authorities to use the glitter bomb bait package as a way to track and arrest scammers who were working with call centers in India to rob elderly people of money.

Since then Rober has contributed articles to Men's Health, and gave a TEDx presentation in 2015 on "How to Come Up with Good Ideas," and another one entitled "The Super Mario Effect-Tricking Your Brain into Learning More."

The famous YouTuber has also made appearances on TV and worked on virtual reality projects for Apple Inc. in 2018. He also worked as a product designer in Apple's Special Projects Group from 2015 to early 2020.

Last year, he started in a Discovery Channel hidden-camera show alongside late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, a TV show that he appeared on numerous times over the years.

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Written by Sophie Webster