John Zarnecki

John, currently Emeritus Professor of Space Science at The Open University, has had over 40 years experience of space research. He worked on such iconic space projects as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Giotto mission to Halley’s Comet, the Beagle 2 mission to Mars and the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn & Titan.

He served for 2 years as President of the Royal Astronomical Society. Asteroid 17,920 is named Zarnecki in recognition of his contribution to space research. For 4 years, he chaired the European Space Agency’s top science Committee which was responsible for selecting which space missions the Agency should fly.

DNA analysis shows that John has 0.0% Irish heritage! However, his PhD supervisor at London University was Irish and he is married to a native of County Limerick so hopes that this gives him sufficient Irish credibility.