March 27, 2025, TUCSON, Ariz. – Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Roger Clark was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community. AAAS first launched this lifetime recognition in 1874, about 25 years after the association was founded.
Clark was honored “for outstanding contributions to planetary science, including creation of a highly used mineral spectral database, compositional analyses of planetary surfaces and the application of remote sensing techniques to environmental disasters.”
AAAS is one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals. This latest class of Fellows includes 471 scientists, engineers and innovators across 24 AAAS disciplinary sections.
Clark has served as a science team member on many NASA missions, including the Cassini mission at Saturn, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor and the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon. He is currently a science team member on the NASA Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation, or EMIT, imaging spectrometer instrument that is operational on the International Space Station and the NASA Europa Clipper mission that is on its way to Jupiter.
Clark has led a team of researchers for decades to develop and refine what’s known as Tetracorder – technology that quickly analyzes imaging spectrometer data, or patterns of light emitted or reflected from an object, from huge swaths of land, sea and sky. Tetracorder is also able to quickly produce mineral maps that can be deployed on a rover to guide autonomous exploration.
Clark also recently discovered multiple sources of water and hydroxyl in the sunlit rocks and soils in regions all over the Moon. It was previously thought that water could only be found in shadowed regions near the Moon’s poles. This discovery not only informs scientific understanding of the Moon’s history, but also help guide future robotic and human missions to the Moon.
Clark’s spectroscopic work also helped during the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. He and his team flew their technology on some of the first planes to return to New York City airspace. They collected infrared data to locate the flames through the smoke to help focus the firefighting effort. When the flames were out, they switched to mapping asbestos in the debris.
In 2010, he and his team also mapped the extent of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They flew multiple flights over days and determined the amount of oil on the ocean surface far surpassed the amount reported by BP Exploration & Production.
“This year’s class of Fellows are the embodiment of scientific excellence and service to our communities,” said Sudip S. Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. “At a time when the future of the scientific enterprise in the U.S. and around the world is uncertain, their work demonstrates the value of sustained investment in science and engineering.”
The Fellows are a distinguished cadre recognized for their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching and technology to administration in academia, industry and government to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.
The 2024 class joins the ranks of noted Fellows such as Alondra Nelson, the Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Mae Jemison, the first Black woman to go to space; Steven Chu, 1997 Nobel laureate in physics who served as the 12th U.S. Secretary of Energy; Ellen Ochoa, veteran astronaut and the Johnson Space Center’s first Hispanic and second female director in its history; Grace Hopper, pioneer in computer software development and programming language; and Vint Cerf, who co-designed the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet and received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The new Fellows will receive a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin (representing science and engineering, respectively) to commemorate their election and will be celebrated at a forum in Washington, D.C. on June 7, 2025. The 2024 Fellows class will also be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science in March 2025.
AAAS Members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the Steering Committees of the association’s 24 sections across scientific and engineering disciplines, by three Fellows who are current AAAS Members, or by the CEO of AAAS. Fellows must have been continuous members of AAAS for four years by the end of the calendar year in which they are elected.
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The Planetary Science Institute is a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation dedicated to Solar System exploration. It is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, where it was founded in 1972.
PSI scientists are involved in numerous NASA and international missions, the study of Mars and other planets, the Moon, asteroids, comets, interplanetary dust, impact physics, the origin of the Solar System, extra-solar planet formation, dynamics, the rise of life, and other areas of research. They conduct fieldwork on all continents around the world. They are also actively involved in science education and public outreach through school programs, children’s books, popular science books and art.
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