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Challenger Center
Steve Otten     Executive Director 222 Church Street
Woodstock, IL 60098

mission control

phone icon(888) 683-9740

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Challenger Center
1250 North Pitt Street
Alexandria, VA 22314

Timothy Livengood

Timothy Livengood, Ph.D.
Astrophysicist

Leisa Clark

Leisa Clark, M.S.
Manager of Educational Materials

Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Miller
Science Education Specialist

Ken Pulkkinen

Ken Pulkkinen, M.S.
Family Science Night Coordinator

Harri Vanhala

Harri Vanhala, Ph.D.
Astrophysicist

Harri Vanhala, Ph.D.
Astrophysicist


Harri Vanhala

Dr. Harri Vanhala is a theoretical astrophysicist at the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, where he divides his time between scientific research and education.

Harri was born and raised in the county of Posio in northern Finland. He went to college at the University of Oulu in Finland, and his degrees—Master of Science, Licensiate of Philoshopy, and Doctor of Philoshopy, all in astronomy—are from there.

For his Ph.D. research work, he journeyed to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After receiving his Ph.D. degree, Harri did postdoctoral appointments at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C., and at Arizona State University in Tempe before landing at Challenger Center.

Harri’s educational efforts at Challenger Center include making classroom visits and giving Family Science Night presentations, during which he discusses a variety of topics covering his interests in astronomy and space science. In his presentations, Harri strives to bring to the audience a sense of the excitement that scientists experience in their research—when they discover aspects of the universe no one has ever seen or thought of before.

In addition, Harri is involved with developing curriculum materials for use in the classrooms, such as materials in support of Challenger Center’s Journey through the Universe program, Voyage: A Journey through Our Solar System, and NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury.

One of Harri’s passions in his scientific research has always been the investigation of the origin of the Solar System. He performs computer simulations studying processes that were important for the formation of the Solar System. These studies can explore the question of how planetary systems elsewhere in the universe may be similar to (or different from) the Solar System. Understanding the variety of the kinds of planets that may be produced during the formation of a star is important in determining whether there could be planets hospitable for life outside of the Solar System. This question connects astronomy to the science of astrobiology—the study of the origin of life on Earth and the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe—and it is another of Harri’s current research interests.