Kathleen Howell

Kathleen Connor Howell is an American aerospace engineer known for applying dynamical systems theory to the design of spacecraft trajectories, work that led to the use of halo orbits in several NASA missions. She is the Hsu Lo Distinguished Professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, where she began as an assistant professor in 1982 and became the school's first female tenured professor. She earned her bachelor's degree at Iowa State University in 1973 and her master's and doctorate at Stanford University in 1977 and 1983, with a dissertation on three-dimensional periodic halo orbits in the restricted three-body problem. Her manifold method was first used to design the trajectory of the Genesis sample return mission from the Sun-Earth L1 point. Honors include the 2004 Dirk Brouwer Award, election to the National Academy of Engineering in 2017, and an asteroid named Kathleenhowell in 2024.