Description
Principal investigator of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program, Helin was one of the most prolific discoverers of minor planets in the history of astronomy. Over her career, she discovered or co-discovered 903 asteroids and several comets, including periodic comets 111P/Helin–Roman–Crockett, 117P/Helin–Roman–Alu, and 132P/Helin–Roman–Alu.
Helin is also credited as the discoverer of the object known as both asteroid 4015 Wilson–Harrington and comet 107P/Wilson–Harrington. Although Wilson and Harrington had observed the object decades earlier, their observations had not established an orbit for it; Helin's rediscovery did.
