Richard Hartle
Associate Director

JCET Research Group:

Administrative Staff

GSFC Code:

613.5

Mailing Address:

Hydrological and Biospheric Sciences
Building 22, Room F124
NASA GSFC, Code 614.4
Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA

Phone:

(301) 286-8234

(410) 455-6291

Fax:

(301) 286-1663

(410) 455-8806

Email:

richard.e.hartle@nasa.gov

Most Recent Publication

Research Interests:

Biography:

Dr. Richard Hartle received a B.S. from the University of Michigan in 1959, and a Ph.D. in physics in 1964 from the Pennsylvania State University, where his major research interest was theoretical plasma physics. In 1964, he joined NASA, and worked at the Ames Research Center for three years before transferring to GSFC, where he is still employed. During his career, he has carried out theoretical and experimental research on the solar wind, planetary atmospheres and ionospheres, plasma physics, and gas dynamics using measurements made from the instruments on satellites such as the Atmosphere Explorers, Dynamics Explorer, Mariner 10, Voyager, Pioneer Venus, Galileo and Cassini. He has published over 100 refereed papers; the most recent concentrate on various gas escape mechanisms and how they affect the evolution of planetary atmospheres, and especially the evolution of water (oceans) on Venus and Mars. He is also active in plasma studies of Saturn's moons, especially Titan, using measurements made from the Cassini orbiter. At GSFC, he has been the head of the Planetary Atmospheres Branch (1975 - 1985, 1991 - 1995), project scientist for the Earth Observing System (1983 - 1987), and assistant chief of the Laboratory for Atmospheres (1985 - 1991).