Harold Weaver

Dr. Harold Weaver have been studying planetary science since 1978, including analyzing the ultraviolet spectra of comets obtained with the NASA/ESA International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite, observing comets using high-resolution infrared spectroscopy, and discovering water emission from Comet Halley in 1985 using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory. Dr. Weaver has led many investigations of comets using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST). He was the principal investigator on the first HST spectroscopic observations of a comet in September 1991, and on the main HST program to study Comet D/Shoemaker-Levy 9, which plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere in July 1994. He led several programs to observe comets using the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), another Earth-orbiting astronomical facility. In 2007, Dr. Weaver became a co-investigator on the Alice Ultraviolet Spectrograph, which is one of the principal NASA contributions to the ESA-led Rosetta comet mission. Currently, he is a co-investigator and the project scientist on New Horizons, the first spacecraft mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. In 2005, he and his team discovered two new satellites around Pluto, Nix, and Hydra. In the summer of 2015, New Horizons passed by Pluto, turning it from a pixelated blob into a complex and diverse world with water ice mountains, nitrogen glaciers, and multiple layers of atmospheric haze. The Asteroid 5720 Halweaver was named after Dr. Weaver in 1996.