The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the single worldwide location for receipt and distribution of positional measurements of minor planets, comets and outer irregular natural satellites of the major planets. The MPC is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation for all of these objects. This involves maintaining the master files of observations and orbits, keeping track of the discoverer of each object, and announcing discoveries to the rest of the world via electronic circulars and an extensive website. The MPC operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, under the auspices of Division F of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

All of the MPC's operating funds come from a NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations program grant. Much of the computer equipment that the MPC uses was provided by the Tamkin Foundation.

Matthew Payne, MPC Director

Matt has worked at the MPC since 2017. He was MPC’s project scientist from 2018 to February 2021. He is now the MPC’s Director.

Matt received an MPhys in Physics (2001) from the University of Oxford, and then after an ill-considered spell as a management consultant in London, returned to academia, earning a Masters in Maths (2004) and a PhD in Astronomy (2009) from the University of Cambridge. He then worked in post-doc positions at the University of Florida and the Smithsonian before starting work at the MPC.

Matt’s research interests relate to the dynamics of both solar system objects and exoplanets, as well as to the processing of large data sets from all-sky surveys such as TESS, Pan-STARRS and the VRO-LSST.

Michael Rudenko

Mike has worked at the MPC since 2009. He created and maintains the MPC's public facing relational database, web interface and services. He is presently active in performing ongoing orbit computations of comets and near-Earth asteriods.

Mike received an SB in Mathematics from MIT in 1977, and has been engaged in computer programming ever since. During the 1980s he undertook a visual comet hunting program, discovering three comets with the aid of a 6-inch refractor.

Peter Veres

Peter has worked at the MPC since 2017 as an astronomer. His research interests are discovery of asteroids and comets, physical and dynamical properties of asteroids and meteors, and simulations of asteroid surveys. He co-discovered thousands of minor planets with Pan-STARRS, worked on LSST simulations on discovery efficiency of NEOs. He is active in public outreach activities.

He received M.Sc. in Physics (2006) and Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics (2010) from Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Peter worked as a research scientist as Comenius University (2010,2014), as Postdoctoral Fellow within Pan-STARRS project at University of Hawaii (2011-2014), as a Caltech Postdoctoral Scholar at Center for NEO Studies in Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2015-2017).

David Bell

David received a B.S. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1985, and completed his Ph.D. in Astronomy (also at UIUC) in 1996 with a thesis entitled “A Kinematic and Abundance Survey in the Galactic Rotational Directions.” He worked for over twenty years at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, where he developed and maintained their online observing proposal system. In 2011, he became interested in minor planet astrometry while working in collaboration with Winer Observatory. David has worked at the MPC since May 2018.

Margaret Pan

Margaret’s research focuses on planetary dynamics and its applications in solar system and exoplanetary contexts. Her project topics have included the Kuiper belt, debris disks, mean motion resonances, planetary rings, exoplanet eccentricities, and planet formation. She has also worked on self-similar solutions for relativistic shock propagation.

Margaret studied physics and astrophysics at MIT (SB) and Caltech (PhD) and joined the MPC in September 2019 as an astronomer.

Rosemary Pike

Rosemary has been an Astronomer at the MPC since January, 2020. She received a B.Sc. from MIT in 2007, and worked at Gemini Observatory as a Science Operations Specialist until 2011. She earned her PhD from the University of Victoria in 2016. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics until moving to the MPC.

Rosemary’s research interests include the orbital distribution and surface properties of trans-Neptunian objects, and what these properties reveal about the formation and evolution of the Solar System.

Federica Spoto

Federica has worked at the MPC since February 2020 as an astronomer. She received an M.Sc. in Mathematics (2010) and Ph.D in Mathematics (2015) from the University of Pisa, Italy with a thesis entitled “The Yarkovsky effect, Asteroid Dynamics and Impact Monitoring”.

Federica worked as a PostDoctoral Fellow at the Nice Observatory (2015-2017 and 2018-2020) and at the Paris Observatory (2017-2018). She is a member of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) and she is also the responsible for the validation of Solar System observations for the ESA Gaia mission.

Federica’s research focuses on the study of asteroid families to understand the evolution of the solar system and chaotic orbit determination.

Mike Alexandersen

Mike has worked at the MPC since January 2020 as an MPC Fellow, and since October 2023 as an astronomer. Mike received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Astronomy from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2007 and 2009, respectively, with thesis projects studying eclipsing binary stars and gamma ray bursts, respectively. In 2015, Mike completed a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of British Columbia (Canada), titled "A carefully characterised Trans-Neptunian survey".

Since 2010 Mike's research has focused on Solar System minor bodies, and has included involvement in the discovery of two moons of Jupiter and over 900 Kuiper Belt objects. Mike has also contributed development to the TRIPPy Python packages for performing photometry of moving targets.

Peter K. G. Williams

Peter started working at the MPC in December, 2024. He received a PhD in astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the CfA in the group of Edo Berger until 2018. From 2018 to 2024 he was the CfA Innovation Scientist, primarily working on the WorldWide Telescope and DASCH projects.

Peter’s research background centers on time-domain radio astronomy and its uses in probing the magnetism of very low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets. He is also deeply involved in the open source software community and is broadly interested in the potential for technology to transform the practice of science. Visit his website for more information.

Chris Moriarty

Chris has worked at the MPC since October 2021 taking on a role focused on software engineering.

Chris received a B.S and M.S in Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida in 2005 and 2007, respectively, with graduate research in artificial intelligence. Chris has been working as a professional software engineer since 2007, with industry experience in both the corporate and small business worlds. He made a transition to astronomy in 2012, taking a Senior Systems Software Engineer position at the Space Telescope Science Institute, gaining a deep understanding of continuous integration, systems engineering, integration and testing and project management. He brought these skills to SAO in 2018, where he led the software development efforts at the Submillimeter Array, and put in place new project management processes for all aspects of development, engineering and maintenance for the observatory.

N Casale, Software Engineer

N have worked at the MPC since February 2022 as a software engineer. They are working to implement new webpages and services that provide easier access to the MPC's data

N received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2017 and '18 respectively. Since 2018, they have worked as a software developer with a special interest in computational efficiency and the management of large datasets.

Radiy Matveev, Software Engineer

Radiy is a software development enthusiast who enjoys all things related to IT. He is interested in developing scalable applications with emerging technologies and translating business requirements into software solutions. He is curious about the how’s and the why's of any product which could be a software product or an actual hardware. The drive for solving problems with refactoring solutions every day is what he enjoys the most about software development in general.

He holds a Master’s in Computer Science from Pace University, Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems and graduated in December 2021. He became a new addition to the MPC team in October 2023.