Ari Atinizian '04 Joins NASA Flight Team

Ari Atinizian ‘04 was selected by The Dexter School to participate as a member of a NASA team that flew over the North Pole for twelve hours in darkness during the winter solstice to take measurements of meteor activity. Ari flew to San Jose, California, with his sister, Lori ‘09, and his parents to join the investigative team at the Ames Research Center.


According to the NASA/Ames Research Center website, the URSID MAC mission “measured the size distribution and spatial distribution of a cloud of debris that travels with the comet 8PTuttle to develop a prediction model for this stream of meteoroids, which is a satellite impact hazard, and to compare (this debris) to the freshly ejected dust observed in the astronomical observations of the comet.” 8PTuttle, which measures ten miles across, has been revolving around the Sun for many tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of years. It ejects solid matter the size of pebbles and coarse grains of sand that fall apart over time. It is this dust that creates the Ursid meteor shower Ari and the team studied on December 22. Besides Ari, participants included scientists from NASA, Lockheed Martin, Caltech, and the SETI Institute. Ari is described by his teachers at Dexter as a “gentleman and a scholar.”

Congratulations on this singular honor!