Alexander Zaitsev (scientist)

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Alexander L. Zaitsev is a Russian scientist and radio astronomer from St. Petersburg. He works on radar devices, near-Earth asteroid radar research, and interstellar radio messaging.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Zaitsev is the chief scientist at the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics. He heads the group transmitting Team Encounter's interstellar messages using the Evpatoria Deep Space Center (EDSC) in Ukraineis serving as the SETI League’s [1] Regional Coordinator for Russia.

Zaitsev's career has focused on three main topics: (1) The theory, the design and implementation of radar devices used in the study of Venus, Mars, and Mercury. He is interested in direct digital synthesizers of coherent radar signals, which was the subject of his M.S. thesis in 1981. (2) Near-Earth asteroid radar research, the subject of his dissertation in 1997. (3) Interstellar radio messaging, his current field of research.

In 1992, Zaitsev led a team of radio astronomers which successfully tracked the asteroid 4179 Toutatis to a distance of 3.6 million km from Earth, using the Evpatoria 70-meter diameter dish as the transmitting antenna. Together with his colleagues, Zaitsev has conducted pioneering work in the radar composition analysis studies of asteroids and planetary bodies. Dr. Zaitsev supervised the transmission of the 1999 and 2003 Cosmic Calls from Ukraine. Under his leadership, a youth group in Moscow composed and broadcast a very moving Teen Age Message to ETI. Zaitsev coined the acronym METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). Zaitsev has developed concepts for radar composition analysis and tracking of near Earth asteroids and comets to better understand if they could pose a future hazard to Earth.

Zaitsev received his B.S. degree in radio engineering from the Moscow Mining University in 1967, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in radar astronomy from the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow. Alexander Zaitsev is member of the Zaitsev is a member of the Space Guard Foundation, the SetiLeague [1], and the European Radio Astronomy Club (ERAC) [7].

[edit] Prices and awards

In 1985, Alexander Zaitsev received the Soviet Governmental Prize in Science. In 1989, he received the Koroliov Gold Medal of the Soviet Space Federation. In 1995, the International Astronomical Union named the asteroid number 6075 as 'Zajtsev' [6]. In 1997, he received the Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal of the Russian Space Federation. In 2003, Alexander Zaitsev received Ukrainian jubilee medal '2500th Anniversary of Evpatoria'.