Primary Job Title Board of Trustees Primary Organization 
Planetary Science Institute
Gender Male
Archinal received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1987. For 13 years he was employed at the U. S. Naval Observatory and did research into methods for more accurately determining the Earth's orientation and improving the coordinate systems of the Earth and sky. In 1997 he helped establish the International Celestial Reference Frame, to
which all other reference frames are now referred. Since 2000 he has been working as a Geodesist with the Astrogeology Science Center of the U. S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff.
In 2006 August, he became Chair of the IAU/IAG Working Group on Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements, which is responsible for establishing the coordinate systems of all solar system bodies. He is a MER Athena and Huygens DISR Science Team member. His research centers on improving the coordinate systems for the other bodies of the solar system so that they can be accurately mapped. He has revised the coordinate reference frames for Io, Mars, and the Moon. As an active amateur astronomer, Archinal is the author of "The Non-existent Star Clusters of the RNGC" (The Webb Society), and co-author of the book "Star Clusters"
