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Fall 2024
LPL Evening Lecture Series
RETURN TO THE MOON
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LPL is going back to the future with the theme of this year's evening lecture series,
Return to the Moon.
One of the primary goals of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory when it was founded by Gerard Kuiper in 1960 was to produce the first photographic atlas of the Moon. When President John F. Kennedy declared in 1961 that the national priority was to send a human to the Moon safely by the end of the decade, that mapping became a key part of what would eventually become the Apollo project, and researchers and students from LPL and the University of Arizona played key roles throughout the duration of Apollo.
Today, through Professor Jessica Barnes' work with the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program, we are still learning from Apollo by studying previously unopened lunar samples collected by Apollo 17 astronauts. But LPL is also looking forward to the future of lunar science, with faculty contributing instruments and research to NASA's Artemis campaign to explore the Moon for scientific discovery and technology advancement.
We hope you will join us this fall for three evening lectures by LPL faculty members whose research will be instrumental in expanding our understanding of not only the Moon, but of our own planet Earth, and beyond. Mark your calendars for the dates below; more information will be provided in the Sept. 1 newsletter. In the meantime, you can learn more about LPL/Arizona and the our history with the Moon from our website.
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Fall 2024 LPL Evening Lecture Series
Kuiper Space Sciences room 308
1629 E. University Blvd. | Tucson
or register for the Zoom webinars using links below
More information is available online.
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Dr. Jessica BarnesWednesday, Sept. 18 | 7:00p.m. (Arizona)
Register for Zoom webinar
Assistant Professor Jessica Barnes seeks to understand the origin and evolution of volatiles in the Solar System by using a combination of nano and microanalytical techniques in the Kuiper-Arizona Laboratory for Astromaterials Analysis to study mineralogy, geochemistry, isotopes and petrological histories of a wide range of extraterrestrial materials.
Dr. Barnes is principal investigator of a project under the umbrella of Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis program to study preserved lunar sample 71036 in comparison with basalts of similar bulk chemistries that have been stored at room temperature, in an effort to unravel the history of volatile loss on the Moon. Other ongoing projects include investigating the petrology of igneous lunar samples, coordinated microanalysis of meteorites to investigate the evolution of water in the Martian crust, and studies aimed at assessing the inventories and origins of volatiles on primitive chondritic and achondritic asteroids, including the study of samples recently returned from asteroid Bennu by the OSIRIS-REx space mission. In 2019, Nature magazine named Dr. Barnes as one of five researchers shaking up lunar exploration. In 2020, Dr. Barnes received a NASA Planetary Science Early Career Award and in 2023, she won the Nier Prize from the Meteoritical Society.
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Dr. Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna
Wednesday, Oct. 16 | 7:00p.m. (Arizona)
Register for Zoom webinar
Associate Professor Jeff Andrews-Hanna researches the processes acting on the surfaces and interiors of the solid-surface planets and moons in our solar system. He is interested in geodynamic, tectonic, magmatic, hydrologic, and climatic processes, at scales ranging from local to global and combines the analysis of gravity, topography, and other remote sensing datasets with numerical modeling. Current research interests include terrestrial planet tectonics, volcanism, impact basins, and hydrology; with projects on the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Pluto.
Dr. Andrews-Hanna was a co-investigator on the NASA Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission (2012-2016), which had the objective of mapping the Moon's gravitational field. Read about some of Jeff's research and about how the Moon turned itself inside out.
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Dr. Angela Marusiak
Wednesday, Nov. 20 | 7:00p.m. (Arizona)
Register for Zoom webinar
Assistant Research Professor Angela Marusiak studies how seismology and seismic instrumentation can be used to explore bodies in our solar system. Dr. Marusiak is on the team that is building seismometers for the Artemis III Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) suite. LEMS is a compact, autonomous seismometer suite that will be deployed by the Artemis astronauts. LEMS will conduct continuous, long-term monitoring of the seismic environment, namely ground motion from moonquakes, in the lunar south polar region. It will characterize the regional structure of the Moon’s crust and mantle, which will add valuable information to lunar formation and evolution models. LEMS is one of two Artemis III instruments that have LPL faculty connections.
Dr. Marusiak was a member of the NASA Mars InSIght Lander team focused on detecting deep structure, including the size of the martian core. Her objective as a member of NASA's Dragonfly mission to explore Saturn's moon, Titan, is to learn how clathrates may alter the internal structure and seismic response of Titan.
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