Michael A'Hearn

Michael Francis A'Hearn (November 17, 1940 – May 29, 2017) was an American planetary scientist and astronomy professor at the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He was the principal investigator for NASA's Deep Impact/EPOXI mission, which performed the first impact of a comet.

Biography Michael Francis A'Hearn was born on November 17, 1940 in Wilmington, Delaware. He was the only child; his father worked for the Internal Revenue Service and his mother was a school teacher. He grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts. His family was of Irish ancestry.

He received his B.A. in physics at Boston College (1961); he received the cum laude degree in three years. In 1966, he joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Maryland; he spent there 50 years.

He was the principal investigator for the NASA Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1, and its extended phase called EPOXI. Deep Impact was first proposed to NASA in 1996, with Michael J. Belton as a PI and A'Hearn as a deputy. Belton left the project, leaving A'Hearn to lead it in 1998 proposal. It was "one of the first active interplanetary experiments" that included an impactor. During the EPOXI phase, the spacecraft was sent to observe comet Hartley 2. A'Hearn was also a co-investigator on Stardust-NExT mission that revisited the Tempel 1 comet after the Deep Impact's impact, and a co-i of two instruments on ESA's Rosetta mission to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet: the OSIRIS camera and Alice spectrograph.

In June 1986, the main-belt asteroid 3192 A'Hearn, discovered by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station in Flagstaff, Arizona, was named after him in honor of his contributions to cometary science.

Selected publications A'Hearn authored over a hundred papers, including more than 30 on the Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.