Today, as PSI gains a new director and CEO, we celebrate the last 21 year of leadership under Mark V. Sykes.
Sykes was hired to lead the Planetary Science Institute in 2004 and over the decades he has ushered in enormous growth. Revenue has more than quintupled from $3.3 million to nearly $18 million today, while net assets increased from just under $200,000 to more than $3.4 million. Projects increased from 76 to 283 active projects in fiscal year 2024.
The number of employees increased from 47 to over 170 – roughly 130 of whom are principal investigators – living in 32 states, Washington D.C. and several countries. Also, during his time at the helm, Sykes oversaw the opening of the PSI Lakewood, Colorado office located west of Denver in 2016 to accommodate the burgeoning Institute.
“PSI has been an internationally recognized organization for more than 50 years and has always been a very collegial, mutually supportive group of scientists, focused on what they loved most – their science,” Sykes said. “That culture was nurtured by our founders and early generations of scientists and deeply informs the culture of the Institute today.”
Sykes received his Doctor of Philosophy in Planetary Sciences in 1986 and Juris Doctor in 1998 from the University of Arizona. He is a member of the Arizona Bar and admitted to the Federal District Court of Arizona. He is also a professional musician and has performed more than 30 seasons with the Arizona Opera Company’s chorus. He is a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists, and has been an elected delegate to the Southern Arizona Central Labor Council.
Sykes discovered cometary dust trails, which in the thermal infrared look like giant airplane contrails in the sky. At a time when comets were thought to be mostly dirty snowballs, these structures evidenced they were mostly rocky bodies with ice. He also discovered a number of dust tori surrounding the inner Solar System in the asteroid belt. These ‘dust bands’ arose from the dynamical evolution of debris from the catastrophic disruption of individual asteroids, and are seen as parallel bands of dust above and below the ecliptic from the Earth. Sykes has been an advocate of advanced propulsion technologies for missions, and an advocate for in-situ resource utilization from near-Earth asteroids to support self-sustainable human operations beyond the Earth from cis-lunar space to Mars. Sykes was a co-investigator of the NASA Dawn mission, which visited the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, on which evidence for cryovolcanism was discovered.
Sykes served as the chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. He was made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his science advocacy. He is also a fellow of the American Astronomical Society. Sykes was one of the founding members and later chair of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group. He was a member of the Planetary Science Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council. Sykes was honored with the 2016 Masursky Award by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society for outstanding service to planetary science and exploration. He has been honored by the designation of Minor Planet 4438 Sykes.
“I plan to continue advocacy for the planetary community in these challenging times, but also look forward to doing more science,” Sykes said. “There is more than a career’s worth of work to do! I’ll be spending more time visiting my grandchildren in Chicago, family in Oregon and training to run my first marathon, which will be held in Scotland this fall.”
