Michele Bannister (born 1986) is a New Zealand planetary astronomer and science communicator at the University of Canterbury, who has participated in surveying the outermost Solar System for trans-Neptunian objects.

[2] She attended Waitara High School, where she won the Korean War Essay Competition.

[9] She was appointed a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria and the National Research Council (Canada) in 2013.

[34] She reported on the images coming in from Pluto during the spacecraft flyby on Radio New Zealand and Nature in 2015.

[38][39] She has written for The Conversation and The Planetary Society magazine, as well as contributing to Scientific American, Newsweek, National Geographic New Scientist, Slate and The Guardian.

[40][41][42][43][44][45] Asteroid 10463 Bannister, discovered by Eleanor Helin and Schelte Bus at the Siding Spring Observatory in 1979, was named in her honor.