NASA Honors Renowned UMD Comet Science Pioneer Michael A’Hearn | UMD Right Now :: University of Maryland

"On June 12, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA posthumously awarded the Exceptional Public Service Medal to University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor Michael F. A'Hearn, one of the world's leading cometary scientists. The NASA Medal is for “fundamental work on comets and small bodies of the solar system, leadership in space missions, and ensuring public access to data from NASA missions and related projects.” ...In addition to being a pillar of cometary science, another major contribution to planetary science was A'Hearn’s nearly three decades as principal investigator for the Small Bodies Node, which is the part of NASA's Planetary Data System that specializes in the archiving, cataloging, and distributing scientific data sets relevant to asteroids, comets and interplanetary dust. A founder and advocate for the Planetary Data System, A’Hearn championed its mission to preserve data of planets and make it publically accessible...."