Damon Paul Simonelli (15 August 1959 – 1 December 2004) was a planetary scientist who worked for Cornell University and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the U.S.[1] He was a pioneer in the development of radiative transfer models to analyze astronomical objects.
He continued at Cornell in a research role, developing the area of quantitative radiative transfer with Joe Veverka to characterise the surface of planets, and he also studied the post-eclipse brightening of Jupiter's moon, Io.
Simonelli and Ray Reynolds suggested that Pluto's density is a result of a collision which also created its largest moon, Charon.
[2][3] From 1991, after returning to Cornell, Simonelli led a team studying smaller bodies in the Solar System, for example the satellites Io, Phoebe, Thebe, Amalthea, Metis and Phobos, and the asteroids 243 Ida, 951 Gaspra and 52 Europa.
His expertise in planning observations and command sequences for the Galileo spacecraft earned him NASA's Superior Performance Award.