Michael Perryman is a British astronomer, known for his work leading the Hipparcos and Gaia space astrometric projects.
After the satellite failed to reach its target geostationary orbit, he also took over the mission management, the project eventually recovering all and more of its original scientific objectives.
[1] In 1993, together with Lennart Lindegren, he jointly proposed a more ambitious astrometric mission to take advantage of technological advances such as CCDs (unavailable for Hipparcos) and large lightweight mirrors.
He led the Gaia project till the Critical Design Review in 2008, establishing the payload concept, technical feasibility, operational and data analysis principles, its organisation structure, and coordinating its scientific case, leading to its successful launch in 2013.
[7] In 2011 he was awarded the Tycho Brahe Prize of the European Astronomical Society for his crucial role in the fostering of high precision, global stellar astrometry from space, in particular the development of the Hipparcos mission.