Career
She is an expert on the planets Jupiter and Saturn, and the author of Jupiter: The Giant Planet. Beebe spent many years helping to plan and manage National Aeronautics and Space Administration missions, including the Voyager program missions to the giant planets. Her specific research interest was the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
She designed experiments to the study and measure the clouds and winds of the giant planets.
She worked interpreting the Galileo and Cassini data and used the Hubble Space Telescope to obtain additional atmospheric data on Jupiter and Saturn. Formerly, she chaired the Committee for Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX), which is the principal space committee of the United States National Research Council.
More recently she was involved with organizing the data about the giant planets in National Aeronautics and Space Administration"s Planetary Data System. She is in charge of the Atmospheres Discipline Node of that program her planetary data archiving skills have also been employed by the European Space Agency.
She serves on the steering committee of the International Planetary Data Alliance.