Fran Bagenal

Fran has worked on many exciting missions, including Voyager, the Juno mission to Jupiter and New Horizons, the first mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Originally from Dorchester, England, but grew up in the flatlands near Cambridge, England. She was an Apollo kid, as a teenager in rural England, stayed up through the middle of the night to watch the Apollo astronauts walk on the Moon. Also, every week watched BBC's "Horizons" documentaries, which showed current scientific topics. Becoming most interested in plate tectonics and space exploration. Fran studied physics/geophysics at Lancaster University, thinking about a career as an exploration geophysicist, but keeping an eye on the U.S. space program. Taking a summer job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At that time, the two Voyager spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were just being launched, Fran worked with the Voyager Plasma Science team. So, the choice was obvious to stay and work on data from Voyager at Jupiter. Inspired by Carl Sagan who she heard speak about the Mariner 9 exploration of Mars, impressed by the way he addressed the questioning from the (rather stuffy) Cambridge academics with honest discussion of the science and intellectual challenges. Dr. Bagenal professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission. Deeply involvement in space missions, Voyager, Galileo, Deep Space 1, New Horizons, and Juno. Usually on the science team as a plasma scientist, studying the magnetic fields of planets, the ionized gases trapped in those magnetic fields and the interactions of plasma with the atmospheres of moons, comets.