MESSENGER Co-Investigator Receives NASA's Distinguished Service Medal

Jack Trombka, a MESSENGER Co-Investigator and member of the Science Team's Geochemistry Group, was recently awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, NASA's highest honor. The award is granted only to individuals whose distinguished accomplishments contributed substantially to the NASA mission.

Trombka's contributions to the exploration of space stretch back more than four decades. Currently an Emeritus Senior Fellow in Goddard's Astrochemistry Laboratory, he began his career in the space sciences at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he worked on the Ranger gamma-ray spectrometer and more generally studied the applications of X-ray, gamma-ray, and neutron spectrometry to planetary remote and in-situ geochemical analysis.

Trombka has been an instrument principal investigator or co-investigator on many lunar and planetary science missions, including the U.S. Apollo, Viking, Solar Maximum, Mars Observer, WIND, NEAR, Mars Odyssey, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter missions and the Russian Luna, Mars, and Phobos missions.

As a member of MESSENGER's Science Team, he played a key role in the development of the X-Ray Spectrometer and Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer instruments and will participate in the analysis of their measurements.

"Jack has been deeply involved in MESSENGER since the first development of the mission concept 14 years ago," states mission Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "The entire MESSENGER team is delighted that NASA has recognized Jack's exceptionally broad contributions to the field of planetary chemistry, and we will be counting on that breadth of experience as we start to unravel the chemical composition of Mercury's crustal materials."