He is the recipient of the 2001 National Air and Space Museum Trophy and has the asteroid 2710 Veverka named after him.

He was a postdoctoral associate and research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on the Mariner 9 project.

Principal Investigator on NASA's Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) mission.

Principal Investigator on the NASA Stardust-NExT mission to comet Tempel 1 in February 2011.

[4] He is the recipient of the 2001 National Air and Space Museum Trophy for leadership during the NEAR mission and in 1979 he was awarded the NASA medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement for his investigations of Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos.