Ellen Susanna Howell (born 1961;[1] also published as Ellen S. Bus) is an American astronomer andplanetary scientist who studies the composition and structure ofasteroids andcomets within theSolar System. She is a research professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of theUniversity of Arizona, and a team member for theOSIRIS-REx sample-and-return space mission.[2]
Howell majored ingeophysics at theCalifornia Institute of Technology, graduating in 1981. Returning to graduate study, she completed a Ph.D. in planetary sciences at theUniversity of Arizona in 1995.[3]
After postdoctoral research at theArecibo Observatory from 1995 to 1999, and continuing as a research associate at Arecibo until 2015, she returned to the University of Arizona in 2015 as a senior research scientist.[3]
In 1977, Howell discovered asteroid3598 Saucier using thePalomar Observatory. She named it after her grandmother, Agnes Elizabeth Saucier.[4] In the same year,Schelte J. Bus, whom she later married, discovered asteroid2735 Ellen; he named it after her.[5] Howell discovered comet88P/Howell at Palomar in 1981.[6]
At Arecibo, Howell's research included radar observations of asteroids including triple asteroid(136617) 1994 CC[7] and near-Earth asteroid2014 HQ124.[8] After her undergraduate discovery of comet 88P/Howell, Howell has also maintained her interests in the observation of comets, including makingradar observations of comet46P/Wirtanen in 2018[9] using the Arecibo Observatory, one of the last observations from Arecibo before its 2020 collapse.[10]
Her work withOSIRIS-REx has included the discovery of water-related chemical compounds on asteroid101955 Bennu, the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission.[11]
Howell's current research is funded by the following grants: Combining thermal and radar observations of near-Earth asteroids, Water and OH on Primitive Bodies: Expanding the Frontier, Volatiles, Regolith and Thermal Investigations Consortium for Exploration and Science (VORTICES), and In the Eye of the Storm: Inner coma remote sensing of three Jupiter Family Comets.[12]
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