LPL Spotlight Stories

Satellite flying through space over Earth with sun setting in the distance.

Air Force Research Lab, Others Tap UA Space Expertise

By Emily Litvack, UA Research, Discovery and Innovation - May 8, 2018 If we spent 60 years leaving every car

This image of Mercury was created using infrared, red and violet filters that capture wavelengths both visible and invisible to the human eye; the colors shown here are only slightly different from what the human eye would see. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University APL/Carnegie Institute of Washington)

New Estimates of Mercury's Thin, Dense Crust

By Emily Walla, UA/NASA Space Grant Intern, University Communications - April 24, 2018 Mercury is small, fast and close to

Reddy and Campbell examine their animation of a Chinese space station flyby. (Photo: Mari Cleven/Research, Discovery & Innovation)

UA Researchers Track Chinese Space Station as it Falls to Earth

By Emily Litvack - March 22, 2018 A defunct Chinese space station, Tiangong-1, is expected to fall to Earth any

The Tesla Roadster and its mannequin passenger, Starman. This image was captured by cameras onboard the vehicle. (Image: SpaceX)

LPL Astronomers Track Tesla Roadster in Space

By Emily Walla, UA/NASA Space Grant Communications Intern - February 20, 2018 Earlier this month, the Falcon Heavy rocket successfully

UA Researchers on Winning Team in Lunar Exploration Competition

By Emily Dieckman, UA College of Engineering - February 9, 2018 Pink Floyd aside, there isn't actually a dark side

A sample of the Michigan meteorite recovered by citizen scientists using maps produced by UA assistant professor Vishnu Reddy’s Doppler radar technique (Photo: Vishnu Reddy)

Rapid Detection and Recovery: The Science of Hunting Meteorites

By Emily Walla, NASA Space Grant Intern, University Communications - February 6, 2018 At 8:10 p.m. on Jan. 16, hundreds

At this pit on Mars, the steep slope at the northern edge (toward the top of the image) exposes a cross section of a thick sheet of underground water ice. The image is from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with an enhanced-color central swath between grayscale on each side. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA/USGS)

Steep Slopes on Mars Reveal Structure of Buried Ice

By University Communications - January 12, 2018 Researchers using the University of Arizona-led HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

The UA's Dante Lauretta: "The work done on CAESAR will ensure that the UA continues to stand at the forefront of extraterrestrial sample analysis for the next 20 years."

UA in the Running for a New NASA Mission

By University Communications - December 21, 2017 NASA has chosen a planetary mission involving a team from the University of

Undergraduate students from a class co-taught by Walt Harris and Vishnu Reddy at the RAPTORS observatory at LPL (Photo: Rachel Fernandes)

UA Students Participate in First Global Planetary Defense Exercise

By Emily Walla, NASA Space Grant Intern, University Communications - December 4, 2017 University of Arizona students recently took part

This 2011 view near the top of the southern rim of Tivat Crater comes from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows the inner slope of a crater on southern Mars with several of the seasonal dark streaks called "recurrent slope lineae," or RSL. A November report interprets those as granular flows, rather than darkening due to flowing water. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA/USGS)

Recurring Martian Streaks: Flowing Sand, Not Water?

Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and University Communications - Nov. 21, 2017 Dark features on Mars previously considered evidence for subsurface flowing