| Frances Bagenal | |
| Birth Date: | 4 November 1954 |
| Birth Place: | Dorchester, Dorset, England |
| Field: | Planetary science |
| Work Institution: | NASA |
| Alma Mater: | Lancaster University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Known For: | Work on NASA planetary exploration missions as a plasma scientist |
Frances "Fran" Bagenal (born 4 November 1954) is a Professor Emerita of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder and a Senior Research Scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in the fields of space plasmas and planetary magnetospheres.
Bagenal has worked on a number of planetary science missions including the Voyager Plasma Science (PLS) experiment, Galileo, Deep Space 1, New Horizons mission to Pluto, and the Juno mission to Jupiter.[1] Usually in her work on different missions, she is a member of the science team as a plasma scientist.[2] Bagenal chaired NASA's Outer Planet Assessment Group that provides input from the scientific community on exploration of the outer Solar System.[3] She appeared in The Farthest, a 2017 documentary on the Voyager program, and in multiple television documentaries including the NOVA 2019 miniseries The Planets.[4]