WILLIAM M. OWEN JR. is an Optical Navigation engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, USA. He has been a member of the technical staff at Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 1979 and has been semi-retired since 2010. He received his PhD in 1990 and is a past member of Division A Fundamental Astronomy, Division F Planetary Systems and Astrobiology, and more.