Kevin R. Grazier | |
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Born | Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Education | Ph.D. Geophysics and Space Physics, UCLA (1997); [1] M.S. Geophysics and Space Physics, UCLA; M.S. Physics, Purdue University; B.S. Computer Science, Purdue University; B.S. Geology, Purdue University; B.S. Physics, Oakland UniversityContents |
Alma mater | Purdue University Oakland University University of California, Los Angeles |
Occupation | Physicist |
Known for | Planetary Scientist, Author, Science Advisor for TV and Film |
Kevin R. Grazier is an American planetary physicist, [2] known for his work on the Cassini/Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan where he had the dual roles of Science Planning Engineer and Investigation Scientist for the Imaging Science Subsystem instrument. He is an expert in computational methods and planetary dynamics and performs large-scale, long-term simulations of early Solar System evolution, dynamics, and chaos.
Grazier has over two dozen technical publications in planetary science, astrobiology, numerical analysis, computer science, and spacecraft operations journals. He is also the science consultant for several television series and movies, most notably the series Defiance, Battlestar Galactica, and Eureka, and the films Gravity and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Grazier has written and/or edited several popular science books. He is from Sterling Heights, Michigan. [3]
Grazier attended Purdue University on an NROTC scholarship, but due to an ankle surgery before his final semester, he was disqualified from further military service. Grazier has Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Geology, and a Master's degree in Physics, from Purdue University. He also has a bachelor's degree in Physics from Oakland University, and a master's degree in Geophysics and Space Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). [4] His doctoral work was at UCLA, [2] which lead to a PhD in Planetary Physics with advisor William I. Newman on "The Stability of Planetesimal Niches in the Outer Solar System: A Numerical Investigation". [4] When Grazier started getting recurring entertainment industry consulting work, he returned to UCLA, and earned a certificate in television screenwriting.
This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(March 2019) |
While a graduate student at UCLA, Grazier worked at the RAND Corporation in nearby Santa Monica, processing Viking Mars imagery in support of the Mars Observer Mission. When the spacecraft was lost during orbit insertion, support for the work came to an immediate end.
Grazier was hired at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory while still in graduate school to write mission planning and analysis software, used primarily by the Cassini/Huygens Mission. Upon completion of his Ph.D., he was hired full-time onto Cassini as a Science System Engineer (later Science Planning Engineer) and, a short time later, as Investigation Scientist for the Imaging Science Subsystem—the visible light camera aboard the spacecraft. As a Science Planning Engineer, Grazier co-wrote an award-winning program called EVENTS which determined event times when spacecraft can make many different types of observations. Later, Grazier created the Cassini Tour Atlas, a large database with geometrical values and event times, used for mission and observation planning, flight rule constraint checking, and data analysis. Grazier led a small team that designed software to automatically regenerate the Tour Atlas for hypothetical spacecraft trajectories, or when the actual trajectory was subject to change. This software saved Cassini an estimated quarter of a million dollars, and earned a NASA Space Act Award, a NASA Board Act Award, and a NASA Tech Brief Award.
From July 2016 to July 2018, Grazier was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, NY.
Grazier has been an adjunct professor of astronomy at both Santa Monica College and Pierce College, having also taught evening classes on astronomy and the "Science of Science Fiction" at UCLA. From 1995 until 2011 he was a planetarium lecturer at Griffith Observatory, and performed over 700 planetarium shows.
Grazier is a frequent public speaker about science, space, technology, and the portrayal of science and scientists by the entertainment industry. He has spoken to K-12 and college classes, given commencement addresses, spoken at film festivals, and gave a TEDx talk about the search for life in the Solar System. In 2011, he was the guest lecturer at the Launch Pad Workshop—held every year at the University of Wyoming in Laramie—that teaches writers basic physics and astronomy. He was a featured speaker at the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Purdue University Department of Computer Sciences, as well as at the 2015 Stories about Science Conference at the University of Manchester in the UK, and the Communicating Science to the Public Conference in Cambridge, MA. He appears frequently at science fiction conventions, in particular Dragon*Con in Atlanta and San Diego Comic-Con.
Since 2001 Grazier has been consulting on NASA educational product review panels.
Grazier and co-author Ges Seger submitted an unsolicited Star Trek:Voyager script to Paramount whilst Grazier was in grad school at UCLA. Based upon the strength of that script, they were invited by showrunner Jeri Taylor to pitch stories to the writing staff. At Paramount, Grazier met staff writers Bryan Fuller and Michael Taylor. [2] It was Fuller who pitched Grazier to Ronald D. Moore as the science advisor on Battlestar Galactica in 2003, and he has been a consultant for Hollywood productions since. [5]
Start year | End year | Name | Reference(s) |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | 2014 | Ascension | [5] [6] |
Battlestar Galactica | [7] | ||
2012 | 2012 | Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome | [5] [7] |
2011 | -- | Defiance | [7] |
2005 | 2011 | Eureka | [7] |
2011 | 2015 | Falling Skies | [5] [7] |
The Event | [7] | ||
The Zula Patrol | [4] |
Year | Name | Reference(s) |
---|---|---|
2013 | Gravity | [7] |
2014 | ETXR | [5] |
2016 | Inversion | [5] |
2017 | Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales | [5] |
Year | Name | Reference(s) |
---|---|---|
2012 | D.N.E.: Do Not Erase | [5] [7] |
While at JPL, Grazier won numerous JPL and NASA technical and software awards, including two NASA Space Act Awards, two NASA Tech Brief Awards, a NASA New Technology Award, and a Multimission Ground Systems Office Achievement Award.
In 2001, Grazier was the honorary chairperson of the first-ever Oakland University "Week of Champions" (homecoming) celebration.
In 2005, along with the cast and crew of Battlestar Galactica, Grazier won a George Foster Peabody Award, given yearly "For significant and meritorious achievement in broadcasting and cable."
In 2008, he attended the invitation-only Sci-Foo unconference at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
in 2011, Grazier won the Oakland University Odyssey Award for the alumni whose career most typifies the university motto "To Seek Virtue and Knowledge."
In 2013, Grazier was honored as an Outstanding Alumnus by the Purdue University School of Science.
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. Per the Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis, they are believed to form out of cosmic dust grains. 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 that was 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.
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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.
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Jani Radebaugh is an American planetary scientist and professor of geology at Brigham Young University who specializes in field studies of planets. Radebaugh's research focuses on Saturn's moon Titan, Jupiter's moon Io, the Earth's Moon, Mars and Pluto. Radebaugh is a Science Team member of the Dragonfly mission to Titan, the IVO Io mission proposal, and the Mars Median project. She was an Associate Team Member of the Cassini-Huygens RADAR instrument from 2008 to 2017, and was a graduate student scientist for Io for the Galileo mission. She does science outreach through her work as an expert contributor to the Science/Discovery program How the Universe Works and other television and radio programs. In December 2012, Radebaugh and her colleagues on the Cassini mission announced the discovery of Vid Flumina, a liquid methane river on Saturn's moon Titan over 320 km (200 mi) long and resembling the Nile river.
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