- Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer and astrobiologist and a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage", …
- Carolyn Porco
Carolyn C. Porco is an American planetary scientist and the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission <sup>,<;/sup> <sup>,<;/sup> presently in orbit around Saturn. In late 1999, she was selected by the London Sunday Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century, and by Industrial Week as one of "50 Stars to Watch". Porco was responsible for the epitaph and proposal to honor the late renowned planetary geologist, Eugene Shoemaker, …
- Alan Stern
S. Alan Stern is the Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Formerly a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, he remains the Principal Investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto. He was Executive Director of the Southwest Research Institute's Space Science and Engineering Division until leaving for NASA on March 21, 2007.
- Christopher McKay
Christopher P. McKay is a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, studying planetary atmospheres, astrobiology, and terraforming. McKay received his PhD in astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1982.
- Steve Squyres
Steven W. Squyres (born 1957) is a professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His research area is in planetary sciences, with a focus on large solid bodies in the solar system such as the terrestrial planets and the moons of the Jovian planets. Squyres is principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. He is also a former student of the late Carl Sagan. He was the recipient of the 2004 Carl Sagan Memorial Award.
- Guy Consolmagno
Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ (born September 19 1952 in Detroit, Michigan), is an American research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory. He obtained his B.A. (1974), M.A. (1975) degrees at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. (1978) at the University of Arizona, all in Planetary Sciences. After postdoctoral research and teaching at Harvard College Observatory and MIT, …
- Chad Trujillo
Chadwick A. "Chad" Trujillo (born November 22, 1973), is an astronomer and the co-discoverer of the dwarf planet Eris. Trujillo works with computer software and has examined the orbits of the numerous trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which is the outer area of the solar system that he specialized in. In late August, 2005, it was announced that Trujillo, along with Michael E. Brown and David L. Rabinowitz, had discovered Eris.
- Colin Pillinger
Colin Pillinger, CBE, (born in Bristol May 9 1943) is a planetary scientist at the Open University in the UK. He graduated with a BSc and a Ph.D. at the University of Wales Swansea. In May 2005 he was diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis.
- Pascal Lee
Pascal Lee is chairman and co-founder of the Mars Institute, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute, and the Principal Investigator of NASA's Haughton-Mars Project (HMP). In conjunction with his role with HMP, he has travelled to the Arctic to conduct studies using Devon Island as a Martian analog. Lee has also participated in several planetary flyby missions.
- Neil Degrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. October 5, 1958 in New York City) is an African American astrophysicist and, since 1996, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
- Clyde Tombaugh
Clyde William Tombaugh (1906-1997) was an American astronomer who discovered the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930. Tombaugh was born in Streator, LaSalle County, Illinois. After his family moved to Burdett, Kansas, Tombaugh built his first telescope and sent drawings of his observations of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory. These resulted in a job offer. Tombaugh was employed at the Lowell Observatory from 1929 to 1945.
- John S. Lewis
John S. Lewis is a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. His interests in the chemistry and formation of the solar system and the economic development of space have made him a leading proponent of turning potentially hazardous near-Earth objects into attractive space resources. Prior to joining the University of Arizona, Lewis taught space sciences and cosmochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Susan Kieffer
Susan Elizabeth Werner Kieffer (born November 17, 1942 in Warren, Pennsylvania) is an American physical geologist and planetary scientist. Kieffer is known for her work on the fluid dynamics of volcanoes, geysers, and rivers, and for her model of the thermodynamic properties of complex minerals. She has also contributed to the scientific understanding of meteorite impacts.
- Gerard Kuiper
Gerard Peter Kuiper, born Gerrit Pieter Kuiper (Dec 7 1905, Harenkarspel (Tuitjenhorn) - Dec 23 1973, Mexico City) was a Dutch American astronomer who became a naturalized citizen of the United States and lived most of his life in his new homeland. Kuiper, the son of a tailor in a rural village in North Holland, had an early interest in astronomy. He was blessed with an extraordinarily sharp eyesight, …
- Ben Bussey
Ben J. Bussey is a planetary scientist. He earned a Ph.D. in planetary geology at University College London, England. In 2001, during his post-doctorate work at the University of Hawaii, he joined the ANSMET (Antarctic Search for METeorites) expedition to recover meteorites from the Antarctic glaciers. He worked at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and the European Space Agency, …
- Sara Seager
Sara Seager is a Canadian-American astronomer who is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and known for her work on extrasolar planets. She was born in Toronto, Canada. In 1994, she earned a Bachelors in Science in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Toronto. In 1999, Sara was granted a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University. Her doctoral thesis explored atmospheres on extrasolar planets.
- Jean-Luc Margot
Jean-Luc Margot is an astronomer and an Assistant Professor at Cornell University. He is originally from Belgium. He specializes in planetary sciences. He was awarded the H. C. Urey Prize by the American Astronomical Society in 2004. The asteroid 9531 Jean-Luc is named after him.
- Harold Urey
Harold Clayton Urey (April 29, 1893 - January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 and later led him to theories of planetary evolution.
- Raymond Jeanloz
Raymond Jeanloz is a professor of earth and planetary science and of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Educated at the California Institute of Technology, Amherst College and at Deep Springs College, he has contributed research fundamental to understanding of the composition of the Earth and the behavior of materials under high temperatures and pressures. For his work he was awarded a 1988 MacArthur Foundation "genius grant."
- Jane Luu
Jane Luu (a.k.a. Jane X. Luu) is a Vietnamese American astronomer.
- Michael E. Brown
Michael (Mike) E. Brown has been a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2003. He was previously an associate professor at Caltech from 2002-2003 and an assistant professor at Caltech from 1997–2002.
- Richard P. Binzel
Richard (Rick) P. Binzel is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the inventor of the Torino Scale, a method for categorizing the impact hazard associated with near-Earth objects (NEOs) such as asteroids and comets. Binzel was awarded the H. C. Urey Prize by the American Astronomical Society in 1991. He also was awarded a MacVicar Faculty Fellowship for teaching excellence at MIT in 1994.
- Harold F. Levison
Harold F. "Hal" Levison is a planetary scientist specializing in planetary dynamics. He argued for a distinction between what are now called dwarf planets and the other eight planets based on their inability to "clear the neighborhood around their orbits," although his proposal suggested the terms "unterplanet" and "überplanet" and used the word "dwarf" to mean something else.
- Michael C. Malin
Michael C. Malin (born 1950) is an American astronomer, space-scientist, and CEO of Malin Space Science Systems. His cameras have been important scientific instruments in the Exploration of Mars. Malin designed and ran the orbiting Mars camera (part of the larger Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft) which took more than 212,000 high-resolution photos of Mars over a nine year period.
- Jack Wisdom
Jack Wisdom is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D from Caltech in 1981. His research interests are the dynamics of the Solar System. Jack Wisdom is co-author of Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics. His 2003 paper in Science on a new geometric phase effect which Wisdom calls "spacetime swimming" has attracted considerable attention, …
- David J. Stevenson
David J. Stevenson (born September 2,1948) is a professor of planetary science at Caltech. Originally from New Zealand, he received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in physics, where he proposed a model for the interior of Jupiter. He is well-known for applying fluid mechanics and magnetohydrodynamics to understand the internal structure and evolution of planets and moons.
- Harold Masursky
Harold Masursky (December 23,1922 - August 24,1990) was an American geologist and astronomer. He started his career working for the US Geological Survey and later joined NASA as a senior science member. He was responsible for investigation of planetary and lunar surfaces, being interested in finding scientifically valuable landing places. This included the Apollo and Viking missions. A crater on Mars and the asteroid 2685 Masursky were named in his honor.
- Ed Stone
Edward C. Stone is a professor of physics at Caltech. He has been the project scientist of the Voyager spacecraft since 1972. He was the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California from 1991 to 2001. He was the recipient of the 1999 Carl Sagan Memorial Award.
- David J. Tholen
David J. Tholen is an American astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii, who specializes in planetary and solar system astronomy. Tholen has discovered a number of asteroids, including the lost, which may be an Apohele asteroid, and, which certainly is; in fact, it has the smallest semimajor axis and aphelion distance among the known asteroids. He won the H. C. Urey Prize in 1990.
- Franck Marchis
Franck Marchis (born April 06, 1973 in Caen, France), astronomer and planetary scientist, is best-known for his discovery and characterization of multiple asteroids and its study of Io volcanism.
- Claudia Alexander
Claudia J. Alexander, Ph.D., is an American research scientist specializing in geophysics and planetary science. She has worked for the United States Geological Survey and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. As member of the technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, …
- Fabrizio Bernardi
Fabrizio Bernardi (born 09 April 1972 in Pomezia/Roma) is an Italian astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii, who specializes in planetary and solar system astronomy. Bernardi has discovered a number of asteroids, including which is an Apohele asteroid; in fact, it has the smallest semi-major axis and aphelion distance among the known asteroids. He is co-discoverer of the asteroid 99942 Apophis (previously known as).
- Larry W. Esposito
Larry W. Esposito (born April 15, 1951) is an American planetary astronomer and a Professor at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado. A 1973 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Esposito received his Ph.D in Astronomy from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. In 1985, he was awarded the H. C. Urey Prize by the American Astronomical Society. His current work involves planetary atmospheres and ring systems.
- James V. Scotti
James Vernon Scotti (1960 -) is an American astronomer. He was born in Bandon, Oregon and graduated from Woodway Senior High in Edmonds, Washington in 1978. He received his B.Sc. in Astronomy from the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1983. Ever since that time, he has worked on the Spacewatch project, which is one of a number of projects that look for near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). He wrote the first automatic asteroid detection software for the project in 1984.
- William Kenneth Hartmann
William K Hartmann (Host, Astronomer) is an internationally known astronomer, writer, and artist.His research involves the origin and evolution of planets and planetary surfaces, and the small bodies of the solar system. He was a participate in the Mariner 9 and Mars Global Surveyor Mars missions He is senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson.
- Robert S. McMillan
Robert S. McMillan is an astronomer at the University of Arizona, and heads the Spacewatch project, which studies minor planets. He has made various discoveries, including notably 20000 Varuna.
- David L. Rabinowitz
David Lincoln Rabinowitz (born 1960) is a researcher at Yale University. He has built CCD cameras and software for the detection of near Earth asteroids, and his researched has helped reduced the assumed number of these objects by half, from 1,000-2,000 to 500-1,000 He has also assisted in the detection of distant solar system objects, supernovae, and quasars, …
- David C. Jewitt
David C. Jewitt is a Professor of astronomy at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. He was born in 1958 in England, and is a 1979 graduate of the University of London. Jewitt received an M.Sc. and a Ph.D in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology in 1980 and 1983, respectively. His research interests include the trans-Neptunian Solar System, Solar System formation and the physical properties of comets.
- Matthew J. Holman
Matthew J. Holman (* 1967) is a Smithsonian Astrophysicist and lecturer at Harvard University. Holman studied at MIT, where he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1989 and his PhD in planetary science in 1994. He was part of a team that discovered numerous irregular satellites of Saturn (Albiorix), Uranus (Prospero Setebos, Stephano, Trinculo, Margaret, Francisco, Ferdinand) and Neptune (Halimede, Sao, Laomedeia, Neso).
- Daniel Kirkwood
Daniel Kirkwood (September 27, 1814 - June 11, 1895) was an American astronomer. Born in Harford County, Maryland, he graduated in mathematics from the York County Academy in York, Pennsylvania in 1838. After teaching there for five years, he became Principal of the Lancaster High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and after another five years he moved on to become Principal of the Pottsville Academy in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.