Focus on Alumni

NASA's Dragonfly -- a robotic rotorcraft-lander that's designed to hop across the surface of an extraterrestrial body -- is set to voyage deep into the solar system to explore Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in 2026. Planetary scientist Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle shares how studying this mysterious moon that's thought to resemble the early Earth could bring us closer to understanding the habitability of other planets -- and the origin of life itself.

LPL alumna Dr. Margaret Landis is a post-doc at CU Boulder specializing in geology and icy bodies all over the Solar System. She has worked with spacecraft such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Dawn spacecraft that visited the dwarf planet Ceres, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the moon. Her current work looking at the chemistry of ices on the moon could be essential in determining what sort of water reservoirs our future human explorers could access for drinking, farming, and fuel.

NASA is on a mission to explore Titan — the largest moon of Saturn. To do that, scientists are building a nuclear-powered, self-driving drone (technically an octocopter) called Dragonfly, led by Principal Investigator and LPL alumna Dr. Elizabeth Turtle. Scheduled to launch in 2026 and arrive on Titan in 2034, Dragonfly could provide clues about how the building blocks of life started here on Earth.

Dr. Jamie Molaro is lead author on a paper documenting the first evidence for thermal fracturing on an object without an atmosphere. " The phenomenon, observed by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on asteroid Bennu, and evidence of thermal fracturing on the asteroid can help scientists learn about the geologic history not only on Bennu, but on other planetary surfaces as well.

LPL Alum Barbara Cohen (2000), in interviewed by Purdue College of Science's Superheroes of Science.

Dr. Ali Bramson, a planetary scientist with expertise in spacecraft remote sensing of ice on other worlds, discusses how to find ice on Mars.

LPL Alumna Zibi Turtle (1998) will lead the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. She’ll also lead the next generation of women in planetary science.

Wittenberg graduate Kathryn Volk is boldly going where few others have gone before – to the Kuiper Belt along the far edges of the solar system in hopes of proving the existence of a few more planets.

SpaceX has been requesting HiRISE images from an area called Arcadia Planitia as potential landing sites for their Starship vehicle. Dr Ali Bramson, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Lab and expert on the region, discusses what’s going on there and why SpaceX might be interested.

On the face of it, NASA's newest probe sounds incredible. Known as Dragonfly, it is a dual-rotor quadcopter (technically an octocopter, even more technically an X8 octocopter); it's roughly the size of a compact car; it's completely autonomous; it's nuclear powered; and it will hover above the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. LPL alumna Dr. Elizabeth Turtle is the missions Principal Investigator.