Dale Cruikshank

Dale P. Cruikshank is an astronomer and planetary scientist in the Astrophysics Branch at NASA Ames Research Center. His research specialties are spectroscopy and radiometry of planets and small bodies in the Solar System. These small bodies include comets, asteroids, planetary satellites, dwarf planets (e.g., Pluto), and objects in the region beyond Neptune (Kuiper belt objects and trans-Neptunian bodies). He uses spectroscopic observations made with ground-based and space-based telescopes, as well as interplanetary spacecraft, to identify and study the ices, minerals, and organic materials that compose the surfaces of planets and small bodies.
Together with several colleagues, Cruikshank has found many kinds of ice on several small planetary bodies. These include frozen CH4, N2, CO, CO2, and H2O on Neptune's satellite Triton, CH4, N2, and CO on Pluto, H2O on Pluto's satellite Charon, H2O ice on many of the moons of Saturn and Uranus, H2O and CH3OH on the Centaur object 5145 Pholus. In studies with the Cassini spacecraft, he and his colleagues have found hydrocarbons on several of Saturn's satellites.
Career.
Cruikshank gained a B.S. in Physics at Iowa State University and finished his graduate studies with a Ph.D. degree at the University of Arizona in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory as a student of Gerard Kuiper in 1968. After a year in the USSR as a National Academy of Sciences exchange scientist, he returned to Arizona for a year, and then moved to the University of Hawaii in mid-1970. As an astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy, he helped with the development of Mauna Kea as one of the most important observatory sites in the world, and used the many telescopes there for his observational studies of the bodies in the Solar System. Cruikshank joined NASA in 1988.
Cruikshank is a member of the International Astronomical Union. On IAU Commission 16 (physical studies of the planets) he served as Secretary (1995-1997), Vice-President (1998-2000), and President (2001–2003). He is also a member of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and its Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS). He served as a member of the DPS Committee (1974-1977), Vice-Chair (1989-1990), and Chair (1990-1991). He is a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Cruikshank has served on numerous NASA review panels and committees of both NASA and the National Research Council. He was the Chair of the Primitive Bodies Panel of the first Solar System Decadal Survey (report published in 2003), and served on the Steering Committee of the second Solar System Decadal Survey. The report of the second decadal survey was published in 2011, with the title, "Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022".
Honors and awards.
In 1988, asteroid 3531 Cruikshank was named after him by the International Astronomical Union, recognizing excellence in research on Solar System topics, and the outreach for scientific exchange with the USSR.