John Zarnecki

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John C. Zarnecki is an English Sir Arthur Clarke Award winning professor and researcher in space science. Currently working at the Open University since 2000, he was previously a professor and researcher the University of Kent. He has taken part in several high profile space probe missions and is an expert on space debris, space dust and impacts.

[edit] Space science

In the course of his career John Zarnecki has worked on hardware for many space missions. In 1981 he moved to the University of Kent and became the project manager on the Dust Impact Detection System which was part of the Giotto mission to Halley's Comet.

In 1990 he was appointed the Principal Investigator on the Huygens probe, part of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons. He lead the team responsible for the Surface-Science Package which collected over 3.5 hours of data from the surface of the moon Titan. For his work on the Huygens probe as a whole, in 2005 John Zarnecki won the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for individual achievement.

He is currently working as the team leader on the ExoMars mission, Europe's first Mars rover mission.

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