The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to space science:
Planetesimals are solid objects thought to exist in protoplanetary disks and debris disks. Believed to have formed in the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago, they aid study of its formation.
New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which became a mission to 486958 Arrokoth. It is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.
Mariner Mark II was NASA's planned family of uncrewed spacecraft for the exploration of the outer Solar System that were to be developed and operated by JPL between 1980 through the year 2010.
Carolyn C. Porco is an American planetary scientist who explores the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s. She led the imaging science team on the Cassini mission in orbit around Saturn. She is an expert on planetary rings and the Saturnian moon, Enceladus.
Christopher Thomas Russell is head of the Space Physics Center at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at UCLA, professor in UCLA's Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, and Director of the UCLA Branch of the California Space Grant Consortium. He received a B.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1964 and a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1968. In 1977 he was awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal and in 2003 the John Adam Fleming Medal by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). He is also a Fellow of the AGU. Asteroid 21459 Chrisrussell was named after him in 2008. In 2017, he was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. He has three grandchildren.
The New Frontiers program is a series of space exploration missions being conducted by NASA with the purpose of furthering the understanding of the Solar System. The program selects medium-class missions which can provide high science returns.
Claudia Joan Alexander was a Canadian-born American research scientist specializing in geophysics and planetary science. She worked for the United States Geological Survey and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was the last project manager of NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and until the time of her death had served as project manager and scientist of NASA's role in the European-led Rosetta mission to study Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
Maria T. Zuber is an American geophysicist who is the vice president for research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also holds the position of the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Zuber has been involved in more than half a dozen NASA planetary missions aimed at mapping the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and several asteroids. She was the principal investigator for the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission, which was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Charles Kohlhase worked for forty years at NASA/JPL leading the design of several robotic deep-space planetary missions. He is also an author, game developer and lecturer.
Vyacheslav Gennadievich Turyshev is a Russian physicist now working in the US at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He is known for his investigations of the Pioneer anomaly, affecting Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft, and for his attempt to recover early data of the Pioneer spacecraft to shed light on such a phenomenon.
Louis John Lanzerotti is an American physicist. He is a Distinguished Research Professor of physics in the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, New Jersey.
David John Southwood is a British space scientist who holds the post of Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College London. He was the President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2012–2014, and earlier served as the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency (2001–2011). Southwood's research interests have been in solar–terrestrial physics and planetary science, particularly magnetospheres. He built the magnetic field instrument for the Cassini Saturn orbiter.
Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle is a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Thomas Michael Donahue was an American physicist, astronomer, and space and planetary scientist.
Linda Spilker is an American planetary scientist who served as the project scientist for the Cassini mission exploring the planet Saturn. Her research interests include the evolution and dynamics of Saturn's rings. She is presently the Project Scientist for the Voyager missions.
Henry B. Throop, is an American astronomer and planetary scientist who specializes in the dynamics of rings and dust in the outer solar system. Throop is a member of the science team for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, and has been involved with NASA missions throughout the solar system. Throop lives in Washington, DC where he runs NASA's science programs in the outer solar system. He has done extensive education and outreach around the world, having spent nearly a decade as an astronomer living in South Africa, India, and Mexico. The asteroid 193736 Henrythroop is named after him.
NASA's Eyes Visualization is a freely available suite of computer visualization applications created by the Visualization Technology Applications and Development Team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to render scientifically accurate views of the planets studied by JPL missions and the spacecraft used in that study. The Eyes family of products is available for desktop computers running Windows 7+, and Mac OSX 10.8+. Deep Space Network Now and Experience Curiosity are web-based and available across all platforms. 3D models of spacecraft and other objects are displayed with the option of comparing their size to a human, school bus, or football stadium.
Candice Joy Hansen-Koharcheck is a planetary scientist. She is responsible for the development and operation of the JunoCam, for which she received the NASA's Outstanding Public Leadership Medal in 2018.
Ralph D. Lorenz is a planetary scientist and engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. whose research focuses on understanding surfaces, atmospheres, and their interactions on planetary bodies, especially Titan, Venus, Mars, and Earth. He currently serves as Mission Architect of Dragonfly, NASA's fourth selected New Frontiers mission, and as participating scientist on Akatsuki and InSight. He is a Co-Investigator on the SuperCam instrument on the Perseverance rover, responsible for interpreting data from its microphone. He leads the Venus Atmospheric Structure Investigation on the DAVINCI Discovery mission to Venus. He is the recipient of the 2020 International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW) Al Seiff memorial award, and the 2022 American Geophysical Union's Fred Whipple Award for contributions to planetary science.
