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S. Alan Stern is a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. He specializes in solar system outer planets, particularly Pluto. He is the Principal Investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto, launched in early 2006, and Executive Director of the Southwest Research Institute's Space Science and Engineering Division.
History From 1983 to 1991 Stern held positions at the University of Colorado in the Center for Space and Geoscience Policy, the office of the Vice President for Research, and the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. He received his doctorate in 1989. From 1991 to 1994 he was the leader of Southwest Research Institute's Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences group and was Chair of NASA's Outer Planets Science Working Group. From 1994 to 1998 he was the leader of the Geophysical, Astrophysical, and Planetary Science section in Southwest Research Institute's Space Sciences Department, and from 1998 to 2005 he was the Director of the Department of Space Studies at Southwest Research Institute. In 1995 he was selected to be a Space Shuttle mission specialist finalist and in 1996 he was a candidate Space Shuttle payload specialist. His research has focused on studies of our solar system's Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, comets, the satellites of the outer planets, Pluto, and the search for evidence of solar systems around other stars. He has also worked on spacecraft rendezvous theory, terrestrial polar mesospheric clouds, galactic astrophysics, and studies of tenuous satellite atmospheres, including the atmosphere of the Moon. Involvement in planetary classification Stern has become particularly involved in the debate surrounding the 2006 redefinition of planet by the IAU. After the IAU's decision was made he was quoted as saying "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review" and claimed that Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune have not fully cleared their orbital zones.• He is one of the signatories of the petition protesting the definition• and has stated in his capacity as PI of the New Horizons project that "The New Horizons project ... will not recognize the IAU's planet definition resolution of Aug. 24, 2006."• A 2000 paper by Stern and Levison proposed a system of planet classification that included both the concepts of hydrostatic equilibrium and clearing the neighbourhood used in the new definition,• with a proposed classification scheme labelling all sub-stellar objects in hydrostatic equilibrium as "planets" and subclassifying them into "überplanets" and "unterplanets" based on a mathematical analysis of the planet's ability to scatter other objects out of its orbit over a long period of time. Writings Edited: | ||||||||
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