Glenn Orton

Infobox scientist name = Glenn Scott Orton image = birth_date = birth_place = Fall River, Massachusetts, U.S. In 1965, he participated in his high school's science fair, focusing on Jupiter, for which he won first prize. He graduated from Joseph Case High School in Swansea, Massachusetts, in 1966.

Orton was a first-generation college student. He was awarded a Bachelor of Science from Brown University in Physics; he graduated cum laude in 1970. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Planetary Sciences in 1975 from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). His thesis involved analyzing radio wave emissions from ground and space-based observations from the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft to model Jupiter's thermal and cloud structures.

Orton is also an instructor at the San Gabriel Valley Region of the Porsche Club of America, where he was awarded "Driver of the Year" in 2011 and won timed trial championships. He is married and has two children. and staff astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, California. He joined as an associate researcher in 1975, as part of the NASA Post Doctoral Program. He has observed Jupiter at the W. M. Keck Observatory, the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Orton has also studied other gas giants, including Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn. He was also granted observation time for the gas giants at Palomar Observatory, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, the Very Large Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, the Cassini Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Herschel Space Observatory. he observed an asteroid's impact on Jupiter. It was originally believed to have been a comet, or space debris.

During his career, Orton derived the atmospheric model for Uranus's structure and composition. In 2015, NASA awarded Orton the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for this work. Scott J. Bolton, the principal investigator (PI) of the mission, said his team installed it anyway. and her leadership on the project earned her a NASA Outstanding Public Leadership Medal. The camera captured the first close-ups of Jupiter's poles.

Awards and honors

NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, 1997, 2015 Molecular Physics Achievement Award, 2025

Selected publications