Michael J. Belton is President of Belton Space Exploration Initiatives and Emeritus Astronomer at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.
Education
Belton studied first at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland and earned his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley for his doctoral thesis on "The Interaction of Type II Comet Tails with the Interplanetary Medium".
Career
Belton served as the Chair of the 2002 Planetary Science Decadal Survey guiding National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other United States Government Agencies plans for solar system exploration. Belton led the Galileo Imaging Science Team in high-resolution imaging studies of Venus, Jupiter, Jupiter"s moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, Earth"s moon as well as asteroids Ida, Gaspra, and Dactyl. The team also studied the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter.