Donald Mitchell

Dr. Donald Mitchell is an instrument designer, planetary magnetosopheres physicist, and heliospheric physicist. He was instrument scientist for the Jovian Energetic Neutrals and Ions (JENI) instrument aboard the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), the Radiation Belt Storm Probes Ion Composition Experiment (RBSPICE) aboard the Van Allen Probes, and Parker Solar Probe’s Energetic Particle Instrument-Low energy (EPI-Lo) as well as principal investigator and instrument scientist for the Cassini’s Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI). He designed several new instruments, one of which (the hockey puck) is the primary sensor for energetic ion composition on two flight missions (MESSENGER’s Energetic Particle Spectrometer [EPS] and New Horizons’ Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation [PEPSSI]) and three upcoming missions (Energetic Particle Detector [EPD] on the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission [MMS], Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector Instrument [JEDI] on the Juno mission, and RBSPICE on the Van Allen Probes). Another (EPI-Lo) has been delivered for flight on Parker Solar Probe. He designed energetic neutral atom (ENA) imagers for IMAGE (High Energy Neutral Atom imager [HENA]), Cassini (Ion and Neutral Camera [INCA]), and Juice (JENI). He also developed a new ENA imager design — now in Phase D for Juice — for increased performance and better background rejection on future missions. He developed a new ion composition design for both composition and angular distributions on three-axis stabilized spacecraft. Dr. Mitchell is published in Earth magnetospheric, solar wind, outer planets magnetospheric, and heliospheric physics.