John Zarnecki

Professor John Zarnecki is a distinguished space scientist and Emeritus Professor of Space Science at The Open University, with a career spanning some of the most iconic missions in space exploration.

His work has included the Hubble Space Telescope, the Giotto mission to Halley’s Comet and, most famously, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. John led the team responsible for the Surface Science Package aboard the Huygens probe, which in 2005 made its historic descent through the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The instruments provided humanity with extraordinary first-hand measurements of this distant world, revealing a surprisingly soft surface with properties resembling wet clay or sand.

John served as President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2016–2018 and received its prestigious Gold Medal in 2014.

Throughout his career, his work has helped turn distant worlds from points of light into places we can begin to explore and understand