Donald Yeomans

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Donald K. Yeomans is a Senior Research Scientist, supervisor of the Solar System Dynamics Group, and manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office.

He is currently the NASA Project Scientist for the Joint Japanese and U.S. mission to land upon, and return a sample from, a near-Earth asteroid (Hayabusa) and he is a scientific investigator on NASA’s Deep Impact mission that successfully impacted comet Tempel 1 in July o f2005. Donald also provided the accurate predictions that led to the recovery of comet Halley at Palomar Observatory on October 16, 1982.

Donald is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont and received his doctorate degree in astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1970. He has written numerous technical papers and four books on comets and asteroids. He has been awarded 15 significant achievement awards by NASA including an Exceptional Service Medal and a Space Act Award. To honour his work in planetary science, asteroid 2956 was renamed 2956 YEOMANS.