Welcome to the Spring 2023 LPL Newsletter! As traditional, we highlight in this issue the many awards our amazing faculty, students, and staff have been honored with over the past year. Some of our recent LPL Ph.D. recipients are also highlighted. In early May, I had the pleasure of witnessing the hooding of six of our graduates—all women—at the College of Science commencement ceremony.

Also, be sure to read about the epic LPL spring field trip to the Big Island of Hawai’i. Our field trips are generally expeditions to the diverse geology of Arizona and the Southwest. Fortunately, we can sometimes rely on the Wilkening-Sill endowment to head farther afield. The Hawai’i trip was enabled by a combination of the endowment and a generous donation, supplemented by funds from LPL. Reviews from the student participants were across the board excellent and we look forward to doing another trip before too long. Donations to the field trip endowment support these outstanding educational opportunities.

Finally, be sure to read the cover story about the citizen science opportunity to support LPL’s Catalina Sky Survey’s asteroid search. This program was the brainchild of CSS’ Carson Fuls. I look forward to giving it a try.

Of course we are all looking forward to the return of the OSIRIS-REx sample container on September 24. NASA TV will be carrying the re-entry live and excitement is building as the Earth-spacecraft distance (currently 0.75 AU as I write this) decreases. We will be back in July with a monthly update to include all the latest science news.