Patrick Michel

Dr. Patrick Michel is an international expert of asteroids born in the famous village Saint-Tropez (France). He is Director of Research of Exceptional Class at CNRS (French Scientific Research National Center) at the Lagrange Laboratory of the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice and Global Fellow (Professor with a foreign permanent affiliation) of the University of Tokyo (Japan). 

With more than 245 publications in international peer-review journals (including the covers of the journals Nature and Science), he develops numerical simulations of the impact process between asteroids and of their surface and interior in their low-gravity environment. He is also highly involved in space missions to small bodies around the world. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the ESA Hera mission (launch in October 2024), which contributes to the first asteroid deflection test with the NASA DART mission. He is co-PI of the CNES-DLR IDEFIX rover onboard the Phobos sample return mission MMX (JAXA), which will be the first rover to be deployed and rove on the surface of a Martian moon (Phobos) to investigate its surface properties. He is Co-Investigator of the two asteroid sample return space missions, Hayabusa2 (JAXA) and OSIRIS-REx (NASA). He is collaboratory on the NASA Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids. He is the lead Editor of the book Asteroids IV (University of Arizona Press, 2015, 150 authors), which provides the most comprehensive review of asteroid knowledge. 

He is the President of the Near-Earth Object Working Group of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a member of the Steering Committee of the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and of the small body assessment group of NASA, as well as a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics. 

He is the author of a book on asteroids for the French public (A la rencontre des astéroïdes) published by Odile Jacob in 2023 with forewords by the Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy. 

He was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal by the Division of Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science, the NASA Silver Achievement Award, the Prize Paolo Farinella for his contribution to our understanding of the collisional process, the Prize Young Researcher 2006 of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics (SF2A), the Gold Medal of the City of Nice and the Gold Medal of the City of Saint-Tropez. 

He is science advisor and part of many documentaries on asteroids, including the documentary “Asteroid Rush” (Saint-Thomas Production) that was awarded 8 Prizes in 2022-2023. He also greatly enjoys working with Dr. Sir Brian May (Queen Rock band guitarist and astrophysicist) and Claudia Manzoni on stereoscopic images of asteroids and related numerical simulations. The asteroid (7561) Patrickmichel is named after him (IAU official name).

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Watch Patrick’s videos:
2022 Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg – Defense and Mitigation
2022 Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg – Origins of the Solar System
2021 Stereoscopic imagery of asteroids with Brian May
2021 About the Near Earth Object Modelling and Payloads for Protection (NEO-MAPP) Project
2020 ESA Asteroid Day Programme – French
2020 Asteroid Day LIVE – Preparing for the Future: Tools to Investigate Asteroids Panel
2019 Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg – Panel 4: Recent Asteroid Science Achievements
2019 Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg – Panel 10: Storytelling Tools for Complex Science
2018 Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg – Session 11
2018 Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg – Session 14
2017 Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg – History of Asteroid Day
2017 Asteroid Day LIVE from Luxembourg – What Happens When Asteroids Hit
Patrick Michel answers the Question by Asteroid Day Update winner of August 2016
A message from Planetary Scientist Patrick Michel – Asteroid Day 2015