Dr. Duncan Steel

Duncan Steel, Ph.D., FRAS has worked for NASA and ESA in the past and currently works for the Australian subsidiary of the Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, one of the major spacecraft manufacturers in the U.S.
 
Duncan earned his BSc degree in Physics and Astrophysics (1977), then a MSc in Optics (1979) at the University of London; his PhD research was on radar studies of meteors at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (1984).
 
Since then he has been involved in a variety of investigations on small bodies in the solar system using optical telescopes, radar systems, and theoretical techniques to investigate their dynamical evolution. Before returning to Australia in 2003 he spent four years as Associate Professor of Space Technology at the University of Salford, UK.
 
Duncan has appeared in dozens of TV documentaries and hundreds of radio interviews, and authored four popular-level books, 130 scientific papers and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. Duncan has been honored with a robot named after him in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel The Hammer of God, and asteroid 4713 Steel was named after him as well.
 
He authored Eclipse: The Celestial Phenomenon That Changed the Course of History, Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Target Earth, and Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the Million Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth.
 
Duncan also authored To seek, to find and not to yield, Strife on Mars, Why shouldn’t aliens look like us?, and Looking for slime on Mars. Read the transcripts The Transit of Venus and The Genesis Factor on the ABC series The Science Show. Read his BBC interview about asteroids and their threat to Earth. Read the transcript of his 60 Minutes interview.