Frances "Fran" Bagenal (born 1954) is a Professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

and a researcher in the fields of space plasmas and planetary magnetospheres.

Career

Bagenal has worked on a number of planetary science missions including the Voyager Plasma Science (PLS) experiment, '' Galileo'',

Deep Space 1 ''Deep Space 1'' (DS1) was a NASA technology demonstration spacecraft which flew by an asteroid and a comet. It was part of the New Millennium Program, dedicated to testing advanced technologies. Launched on 24 October 1998, the ''Deep Space ...

, '' New Horizons'' mission to

Pluto Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest ...

, and the ''

Juno Juno commonly refers to: *Juno (mythology), the Roman goddess of marriage and queen of the gods *Juno (film), ''Juno'' (film), 2007 Juno may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Fictional characters *Juno, in the film ''Jenny, Juno'' *Ju ...

'' mission to

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

. Usually in her work on different missions, she is a member of the science team as a plasma scientist. Bagenal chaired

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

's Outer Planet Assessment Group that provides input from the scientific community on exploration of the outer Solar System. She appeared in ''

The Farthest ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'', a 2017 documentary on the

Voyager program The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two robotic interstellar probes, ''Voyager 1'' and ''Voyager 2''. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, to fly near t ...

, and in multiple television documentaries including the NOVA 2019 miniseries

The Planets ''The Planets'', Op. 32, is a seven- movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst, written between 1914 and 1917. In the last movement the orchestra is joined by a wordless female chorus. Each movement of the suite is name ...

Honors

* Elected a Fellow of the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's a ...

in 2006. * Elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020 * Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021 * The outer

main-belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

asteroid 10020 Bagenal, discovered by astronomer Schelte J. Bus at Palomar Observatory in 1979, was named in her honor. The official naming citation was published on 13 April 2017 ().

Selected publications

* *

References

External links

NASA Interview with Fran Bagenal about New Horizons''Astrobiology Magazine'', October 17, 2013, “From Plasma Science to Dwarf Planets: Fran Bagenal”Women in Planetary Science interview with Bagenal
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bagenal, Frances 1954 births Living people People from Dorchester, Dorset Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni NASA people Fellows of the American Geophysical Union Planetary scientists Women planetary scientists Fellows of the American Astronomical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences