Linda Spilker
Born
Linda Joyce Bies[1]

1955 (age 68–69)
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPlanetary Science
InstitutionsJet Propulsion Laboratory
ThesisWave structure in planetary rings (1992)
Doctoral advisorChristopher T. Russell

Linda Spilker is an American planetary scientist who served as the project scientist for the Cassini mission exploring the planet Saturn.[2][3][4][5][6] Her research interests include the evolution and dynamics of Saturn's rings.[7]

Career

Spilker received a B.A.in Physics from California State University, Fullerton in 1977 and an M.S. in Physics from California State University, Los Angeles in 1983. She obtained a Ph.D. in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA in 1992. She joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1977, initially working on the Voyager missions that were launched the same year.[8] She became a Cassini mission scientist in 1990.[2] In 1997, she was the editor of a NASA publication that summarizes the mission's legacy.[9] In 2010 she became the Cassini mission project scientist, a role in which she directed the entire team's scientific investigations.[3][4][5][6][8] She has appeared as herself in multiple television documentary programs, including several in the PBS Nova series.[1]

Honors and awards

  • NASA Exceptional Service Medal (2013)[10][2]
  • NASA Group Achievement Award (2011, 2009, 2000, 1998, 1982–1989)[2]
  • NASA Scientific Achievement Award (1982)[2]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Linda Spilker". IMDb.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Linda Spilker". science.jpl.nasa.gov.
  3. 1 2 "NASA's Cassini Begins Its Final Mission Before Self-Destruction". NPR.org. April 5, 2017.
  4. 1 2 "NASA's Cassini Mission Conducts Daring Dive through Saturn's Rings". Scientific American. April 26, 2017.
  5. 1 2 "Saturn ruled this scientist's life for 40 years — here's why she needs NASA to go back after Cassini's death". Business Insider. September 17, 2017.
  6. 1 2 Kaplan, Sarah (September 14, 2017). "Cassini was the mission of a lifetime for this NASA scientist. Now she must say goodbye". Washington Post.
  7. ↑ Meltzer, Michael (2015). The Cassini-Huygens Visit to Saturn: An Historic Mission to the Ringed Planet. Springer. p. 287. ISBN 978-3-319-07607-2.
  8. 1 2 "Linda Spilker, planetary scientist". scicom.ucsc.edu.
  9. ↑ Spilker, Linda, ed. (1997). Passage to a ringed world : the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan (PDF). National Aeronautics and Space Administration SP-533.
  10. ↑ "NASA Agency Honor Awards" (PDF). 2013. p. 25.
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