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Dr. Louis Lanzerotti is Distinguished Research Professor of Physics, New Jersey Institute of Technology. In 2004 President George W. Bush nominated Dr. Lanzerotti to the 24-member National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Lanzerotti chaired the blue-ribbon panel to study whether to prolong the mission of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Dr. Lanzerotti has spent more than four decades contributing to research that includes studies of space plasmas and geophysics, and engineering problems related to the impact of atmospheric and space processes on terrestrial technologies, and those in space.

He has been principal investigator or co-investigator on several NASA interplanetary and planetary missions including Voyager, Ulysses, Galileo, ACE, and Cassini. NASA has recognized Dr. Lanzerotti’s contributions to space science with the agency’s Distinguished Scientific Achievement Medal.

In our March 25, 2005 interview, Dr. Lanzerotti discussed

• The Hubble Space Telescope’s long-term mission
• NASA budget considerations
• The four-year Cassini mission to Saturn, Titan, and Saturn’s other moons
• The Ulysses mission which conducted the first-ever survey of the Sun’s environment in space from the equator to the poles, and over a wide range of solar activity conditions