astronomy

John Zarnecki

John Zarnecki is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John Zarnecki rather than just read about it. In short: Jan Charles "John" Zarnecki, (born 6 November 1949 in Finchley, Middlesex, England) is an English space science professor and researcher. Since 2013, Zarnecki has been a Director of the International Space Science Institute (Berne, Switzerland).

Key takeaways

John Zarnecki belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John Zarnecki to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John Zarnecki from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jan Charles "John" Zarnecki, (born 6 November 1949 in Finchley, Middlesex, England) is an English space science professor and researcher. Since 2013, Zarnecki has been a Director of the International Space Science Institute (Berne, Switzerland). Between 2004 and 2013 he was a Professor of Space Science (now Emeritus) at the Open University, having previously been a professor and researcher at the University of Kent. Zarnecki has taken part in several high-profile space probe missions and is an expert on space debris, space dust and impacts. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2014, and became President of the Royal Astronomical Society in May 2016, having been vice-president from 2009 to 2011 and President-Elect for the year from May 2015.

Early life Born and raised in Finchley, Middlesex, the son of the art historian George Zarnecki, he was educated at Highgate School in north London and was interested in space exploration from an early age. In 1961, the school gave its pupils a day off to witness the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin, visiting the tomb of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery nearby. Zarnecki was among those who went. Zarnecki graduated with a BA degree in Natural Sciences from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1971 (promoted to MA in 1975). He undertook doctoral research at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey and subsequently obtained a PhD degree in Physics and Astronomy from University College London in 1977.

Space science In the course of his career, Zarnecki has worked on hardware for many space missions. At first, he worked for British Aerospace and was part of the team that developed the Faint Object Camera for the Hubble Space Telescope. In 1981, he moved to the University of Kent in Canterbury and became the project manager for the Dust Impact Detection System on board the Giotto probe that visited Halley's Comet. In 1988, Zarnecki was involved in plans to provide instrumentation for a proposed asteroid mission called Vesta, but, when this was dropped in favour of the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons, he and his team decided to use their expertise to design the Surface Science Package (SSP) for the Huygens probe. The probe would be released from the main spacecraft (Cassini) and descend to the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan. The proposal was successful and, in 1990, Zarnecki was appointed as the SSP's Principal Investigator. The next seven years were spent assembling and testing the instrument. With only 70% of necessary funds available, Zarnecki had to be creative with the resources he was assigned. He managed to persuade a group of scientists in Poland to provide part of the instrumentation for free. One major setback came during the final stages of testing when, on 14 January 1996, the package was put through its final vibration test and its casing cracked. After some extensive redesign, the package was delivered to the European Space Agency (ESA). On 15 October 1997, Cassini-Huygens was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral. In 2000, Zarnecki, along with the rest of the SSP team, moved to the Open University in Milton Keynes. There he became involved in the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to Mars, lost while landing in December 2003. On 25 December 2004, the Huygens probe separated successfully from Cassini and twenty-two days later, on 14 January 2005, it landed successfully on the surface of Titan. The SSP collected over three and a half hours of data, which, thanks to its efficient encoding, could be stored on a single floppy disk. The BBC Four television documentary Destination Titan, first broadcast in April 2011, focused on Zarnecki and the Huygens mission from the perspective of the mission scientists. Between 2007 and 2009, Zarnecki was the Directory of the Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space & Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) at the Open University. He is currently working as the team leader on the ExoMars mission, Europe's first Mars rover mission. He is also co-investigator on the PTOLEMY instrument for the Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Honours and appointments In 2005, Zarnecki won the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for individual achievement, for his work on the Huygens probe. The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) 2006 Laurels for Team Achievement was awarded to the Cassini-Huygens team. In 2006, Asteroid 17920 was named Zarnecki by the International Astronomical Union, in recognition of “..spacecraft instrumentation to study the surfaces and atmospheres of planets, satellites and small bodies". He and his group won the NASA Group Achievement Award for the "Huygens Surface Science Package" in 2007. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2014. In September 2014 Zarnecki was appointed a Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences for his significant contribution to Polish science. In 2016, he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS). Besides that, he is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP), a Chartered Physicist (CPhys) and Member of the International Astronomical Union.

Personal Zarnecki lives in Milton Keynes and has a house in the south of France. He is a passionate supporter of Crystal Palace Football Club.

References

External links Audio Interview on Astrotalkuk Web page advertising a public speech by Prof. John Z. at Cranfield University Fingers Crossed – Fifty Years of Space Exploration Archived 3 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine, 2007 Open University lecture given by Zarnecki.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John Zarnecki

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John Zarnecki claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John Zarnecki before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John Zarnecki ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John Zarnecki

In research: John Zarnecki appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John Zarnecki in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John Zarnecki is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1949 births, Academics of the Open University, Academics of the University of Kent, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John Zarnecki outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John Zarnecki in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John Zarnecki means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John Zarnecki out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John Zarnecki in simple terms?

Why does John Zarnecki matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John Zarnecki?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John Zarnecki.