(Tim) Mutch (August 26, 1931 – October 6, 1980)[1] was an American geologist and planetary scientist and mountain climber.

[2] Tim Mutch was an mountain climber and planetary scientist; he began mountain climbing in the 1950s in the Tetons and subsequently British Columbia where he made the first ascent of Mount Arjuna and in the Canadian Rockies where he made the first ascent of Eiffel Peak.

In 1955 he went with Joseph Murphy to Pakistan where the two ascended Istor-o-nal (elevation 24,288 feet) in the Hindu Kush, believing that they were the first to summit this peak.

At the time of his disappearance in 1980 he was on leave from Brown and serving as Associate Administrator of Space Science at NASA in Washington DC.

A crater on Mars was named in his honor, and the Viking 1 lander was formally renamed "Thomas A. Mutch Memorial Station" on January 7, 1981, by then NASA Administrator, Robert A. Frosch; the engineering model currently displayed in the Smithsonian Institution has a small plaque beside it commemorating this, and a note that it will be left with the actual lander when circumstances permit.