Lunar and Planetary Laboratory collection

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory was founded in 1960 by astronomer Gerard Kuiper in Tucson, Arizona. Most of the original work was based on observations using telescopes, but as the exploration of the planets expanded in scope, so did LPL. In 1973 the Department of Planetary Science (PTYS) was formed to educate succeeding generations of planetary scientists. In 1965 thanks in part to funds from NASA the Planetary Sciences Building on the University of Arizona campus was built. The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory has been involved in almost every interplanetary spacecraft sent.

Leif Andersson was a Swedish astronomer born in 1943. He won the Swedish television quiz show 10.000-kronorsfrågan ("The 10,000 Kronor Question") twice, the first time at age 16. He studied astronomy at Lund University and recived his PhD from Indiana Univeristy. He was then hired as a post-doctoral research associate in 1973 by Dr. Gerard Kuiper at the Lunar Planetary Laboratory. He calculated the first observable transits of Pluto and Charon in the early 1980s and helped map the far side of the moon in NASA's Catalogue of Lunar Nomenclature, with co-author Ewen Whitaker, published after his death in 1982. He died in 1979 at the age of 35 from lymphatic cancer.

Robert Strom is Professor Emeritus at the Univeristy of Arizona. He began working at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in 1963. He worked on projects relating to Apollo 8, 10, and 11 as a member of the Lunar Operations Working Group. As well as Deputy Team Leader (Imaging Experiment) for Mariner 10 (Venus/Mercury) and as an Imaging Team Member for Voyager 1 and 2. He was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA) in 2010.

Robert McMillanis a retired Research Professor at the University of Arizona and has worked in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory since 1979. His career has included studies of variable stars, statistics of stellar populations, interstellar dust, interstellar magnetic fields, planetary atmospheres, Doppler shift spectroscopy of stars, astronomical instrumentation, and surveys of asteroids. He led the Spacewatch® Project until 2021, which recovers and makes astrometric observations of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). Some of McMillan's peer-reviewed first-author papers from the 1970s were still being cited and used as many as 40 years later.