Draft:Jay Gallentine

At left, John Casani sits for an interview with space history author Jay Gallentine, on the right. Picture taken January 27, 2016, in Pasadena, California.

Jay Gallentine is an American, historian, filmmaker and author specializing in the history of robotic space exploration of the solar system.

Gallentine is author of two books, Ambassadors from Earth: Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft, published in 2009, and Infinity Beckoned: Adventuring Through the Inner Solar System, 1969-1989, published in 2016. Both were published through the University of Nebraska Press' Ordway Award-winning series Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight. A third book, Born to Explore: John Casani's Grand Tour of Life in the Solar System is slated for publication in 2025, also as part of the Outward Odyssey series.

Ambassadors from Earth was the winner of the 2009 AAS Eugene M. Emme Award for Astronautical Literature, becoming the first Outward Odyssey book to do so. A copy of the book also appeared briefly in the pilot episode of the 2017 TV series Ghosted.

Gallentine is a graduate of the University of Iowa.

Minovitch Lawsuit

In 2012, Gallentine was named as a defendant in a lawsuit by mathematician Michael Minovitch, whom Gallentine had interviewed for Ambassadors from Earth. Minovitch accused Gallentine, the California Institute of Technology, and 20 unnamed individuals of six complaints, including libel, slander, and interference, related to Minovitch's claims of having invented the concept of gravity assist.

Acting as his own attorney, Gallentine filed a response refuting the legal merits of Minovitch's complaints. Minovitch subsequently dismissed his suit. Gallentine has since shared summaries of the history of the gravity assist concept capturing the earlier discoveries on which Minovitch's work was based.