Peter Jenniskens

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Meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens (b. 1962) is a senior research scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and at NASA Ames Research Center ^[1]. His full name is Petrus Matheus Marie Jenniskens. He is an expert on meteor showers. Jenniskens is the author of of the 790 page book "Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets" published by Cambridge University Press in 2006 ^[2]. Jenniskens is chair of the Task Group on Meteor Shower Nomenclature of Commission 22 of the International Astronomical Union (2006-2009) ^[3]. Discovered at Ondrejov Observatory by Peter Plavec, asteroid "42981 Jenniskens" is named in his honor.

1 NASA Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaigns
- 1.1 Meteor showers
- 1.2 Spacecraft reentries
2 Other research
3 References

[edit] NASA Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaigns

[edit] Meteor showers

Jenniskens is the principal investigator of NASA's Leonid Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Leonid MAC), a series of four airborne missions that fielded modern instrumental techniques to study the 1998 - 2002 Leonids meteor storms ^[4]. These missions helped develop meteor storm prediction models, detected the signature of organic matter in the wake of meteors as a potential precursor to origin-of-life chemistry, and discovered many new aspects of meteor radiation.

More recent meteor shower missions include the Aurigid Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Aurigid MAC), which studied a rare September 1, 2007, outburst of Aurigids meteors from long-period comet C/1911 N1 (Kiess) ^[5].

[edit] Spacecraft reentries

His research also includes artificial meteors. Jenniskens is the principal investigator of NASA's Genesis and Stardust Entry Observing Campaigns to study the fiery return from interplanetary space of the Genesis (Sep. 2004) and Stardust (Jan. 2006) sample return capsules ^[6]. These airborne missions studied what are artificial meteors to understand what physical conditions the protective heat shield endured during the reentry before being recovered.

An overview of ongoing missions can be found at: [1].

[edit] Other research

Jenniskens identified the Quadrantids parent body 2003 EH1, and several others, as new examples of how fragmenting comets are the dominant source of meteor showers ^[7]. Before that, he predicted and observed the 1995 Alpha Monocerotids meteor outburst (with members of the Dutch Meteor Society), proving that "stars fell like rain at midnight" because the dust trails of long-period comets wander on occasion in Earth's path. In earlier collaborations, he discovered that an unusual viscous form of liguid water can be a common form of water in comets and icy satellites (with David F. Blake) and he created the first broad detection-limited survey of Diffuse Interstellar Bands (with Xavier Désert).