Dr. Christopher Hamilton joined LPL this spring as an Assistant Professor. Christopher is a planetary volcanologist with an interest in field-based analogs for geologic surface processes on terrestrial planets and satellites. He comes to LPL after three years at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory where he
2014 Spring Department News
Dr. Gilda Ballester has been named a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Planetary Sciences/Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Gilda has been an Associate Staff Scientist at LPL since 2000. Before coming to Tucson, she conducted her research at the University of Michigan as an Associate Research Scientist in the
Christa L. Van Laerhoven successfully defended her dissertation titled "Multi-Planet Extra-Solar Systems: Tides and Classical Secular Theory" on April 16. Christa began her career as a graduate student in 2008, with two years of support from a Canadian NSERC (National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Fellowship. She was
Congratulations to Ken Domanik, recipient of this year's LPL Appointed Personnel Staff Excellence Award, and to Bertha Orosco, recipient of the 2014 Classified Staff Excellence Award!
Ken is Manager of the Electron Microprobe Lab; he has been with LPL since 1999, and previously won the AP
LPL’s Catalina Sky Survey is providing data to Planetary Resources, Inc. in an effort to improve detection of NEOs. Planetary Resources is a private company committed to utilization of resources in space. The president is Chris Lewicki, whose LPL connections stretch back to his days as an undergraduate working
The UA Campus played host again this spring to the annual Tucson Festival of Books. This year's event, the sixth annual festival, was held March 15-16, 2014. The Tucson Festival of Books is free and open to the public. It has become one of the most anticipated and well
The Catalina Sky Survey Team (CSS) reached an important milestone, and also discovered two highly unusual asteroids in the last few months. The milestone was that CSS discovered its 5000th Near-Earth Object (NEO). On March 31, CSS Astronomer Jess Johnson discovered NEO 2014 FS52 using the 60" reflector on Mt. Lemmon. According
The Art Of Planetary Science: An Exhibition – bringing together the art and science communities to engage the public.
by Jamie Molaro
On December 4, 2013, the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) presented The Art of Planetary Science: An Exhibition (TAPS). This was a one night art
The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, under the direction of Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta, continues to make steady progress. On December 9, the public countdown clocks for the mission were turned on. On that day, the time until the start of the September 2016 launch window dropped to 999
Elisabetta Rigliaco joined LPL in September 2011, working as a post-doctoral fellow on the evolution and dispersal of protoplanetary disks around young stars with Dr. Ilaria Pascucci. Her current research primarily focuses on understanding how protoplanetary disks evolve and disperse, leading to the formation of planets. In particular