[meteorite-list] Alan Stern Selected to Lead Science Mission Directorate at NASA

[Ron Baalke]

Feb. 12, 2007

David Mould/Bob Jacobs
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1898/1600 

RELEASE: 07-38

PLANETARY SCIENTIST SELECTED TO LEAD MISSION DIRECTORATE

WASHINGTON - NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced Monday that 
Dr. S. Alan Stern will be the agency's associate administrator for 
the Science Mission Directorate, effective April 2. Stern succeeds 
Dr. Mary L. Cleave who announced her retirement. 

Stern joins NASA from the Southwest Research Institute's Space Science 
and Engineering Division, Boulder, Colo., where he has been serving 
as executive director of the Space Science and Engineering Division. 

As chief executive of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Stern will 
direct a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs 
for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system and the universe 
beyond. In addition, he will manage a broad spectrum of grant-based 
research programs and spacecraft projects to study Earth and the 
universe. 

Stern is a planetary scientist and an author who has published more 
than 175 technical papers and 40 popular articles. His research has 
focused on studies of our solar system's Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, 
comets, satellites of the outer planets, Pluto and the search for 
evidence of solar systems around other stars. He has worked on 
spacecraft rendezvous theory, terrestrial polar mesospheric clouds, 
galactic astrophysics and studies of tenuous satellite atmospheres, 
including the atmosphere of the moon. 

Stern has a long association with NASA, serving on the NASA Advisory 
Council and as the principal investigator on a number of planetary 
and lunar missions, including the New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt 
mission. He was the principal investigator of the Southwest 
Ultraviolet Imaging System, which flew on two space shuttle missions, 
STS-85 in 1997 and STS-93 in 1999. 

He has been a guest observer on numerous NASA satellite observatories, 
including the International Ultraviolet Explorer, the Hubble Space 
Telescope, the International Infrared Observer and the Extreme 
Ultraviolet Observer. 

He holds bachelor's degrees in physics and astronomy and master's 
degrees in aerospace engineering and planetary atmospheres from the 
University of Texas, Austin. In 1989, Stern earned a doctorate in 
astrophysics and planetary science from the University of Colorado at 
Boulder. 

He is an instrument-rated commercial pilot and flight instructor, with 
both powered and sailplane ratings. Stern and his wife have three 
children. 

For more information about NASA and its suite of science programs, 
visit the Internet at: 

http://science.hq.nasa.gov/

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