Alumni News

Kudos to Dr. Molly Simon (2019), recipient of the Arizona State University College of Liberal Arts and Science Teaching Award! 

Molly's current research focuses on utilizing citizen science to bring authentic data-rich experiences to undergraduate students both in person and online. She uses a mixed-methods approach to measure the efficacy of new active learning strategies developed to increase student learning on a variety of topics taught in college-level astronomy and planetary science courses.

Dr. Barbara Cohen (2000), planetary scientist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, was named project scientist for Artemis IV, which features a second crewed landing near the Moon’s South Pole, as well as the first Gateway assembly mission with the addition of a new element to the lunar space station. Cohen was the principal investigator of NASA’s Lunar Flashlight mission, an orbiter aiming to map ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the Moon's South Pole, and the Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), an instrument aboard Astrobotic's Peregrine Mission 1, one of the first lunar surface delivery contracts awarded through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-appoints-lunar-science-leads-for-artemis-iii-…

Dr. Maria Steinrueck (2021) is the recipient of a 51 Pegasi b Fellowship from the Heising-Simons Foundation. The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship provides postdoctoral scientists with the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy. Dr. Steinrueck’s research seeks to enable more accurate observational interpretations and predictions across a range of exoplanet types through three-dimensional climate modeling. “We knew that photochemical hazes exist on exoplanets, but nobody had examined what they do in three dimensions. We had only one-dimensional models, which cannot describe the weather of a planet fully.”

As an undergraduate student majoring in physics with a focus on particle physics, Maria encountered a team studying exoplanet atmospheres and recalled her own excitement, years earlier, when exoplanet winds were first measured. It was enough to change her course as a scholar and professional. “I was drawn to climate models where you can actually simulate the winds and temperature distribution on an exoplanet and see what that looks like in three dimensions, through day and night differences in temperature and other conditions. 3D models are necessary to more fully understand what’s happening on planets we cannot see directly.”

Today, Maria examines how clouds and hazes impact a planet’s atmospheric circulation, temperatures, and transmission and emission spectra. Photochemical hazes, born of UV reactions with molecules such as methane, can significantly distort or mute the chemical signatures observed and used to characterize a planet. In a first for her field, Maria developed a three-dimensional climate model that predicts the location of photochemical hazes in the atmospheres of Hot Jupiters, the largest and most extensively described exoplanets to date.

During her fellowship, Maria will model 3D atmospheric circulation for a wide variety of exoplanets, determining how haze particles mix and move across different planetary conditions. Included in this exploration will be cooler, smaller planets closer in size to Neptune and Earth, which are increasingly observable through next-generation telescopes. “With the new space telescope (JWST) we will get more data and details about smaller exoplanets. From the first measurements published, we can already see there is uneven cloud and haze coverage, with a lot of 3D effects that must be factored in to interpret observations of these planets correctly.” Maria’s modeling will improve the accuracy of interpreting these observations, for a clearer picture of distant planets more like our own.

Prior to starting her 51 Pegasi b Fellowship at the University of Chicago, Maria will continue in her position as the Atmospheric Physics of Exoplanets Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

Dr. David Grinspoon (1989) was selected as a member of the 16-member NASA independent study team on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). The 9-month long study began on Oct. 24 and will focus on unclassified data. The team will release its findings in 2023.

Dr. Grinspoon is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and is a member of science teams for several interplanetary spacecraft missions including the DAVINCI mission to Venus. He is the former inaugural Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. His research focuses on comparative planetology especially regarding climate evolution and the implications of habitability on Earth-like planets. He was awarded the Sagan Medal by the American Astronomical Society and he is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also an adjunct professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Science at the University of Colorado (Boulder) and Georgetown University.

When NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, it altered the moonlet's orbit by 33 minutes. Since the impact, DART scientists, including LPL alumni Nancy Chabot (DART Coordination Team Lead) and Andy Rivkin (Investigation Team Co-Lead), have been analyzing the impact ejecta and studying the observations to determine the object's composition and clues to its formation, in addition to how to defend Earth if an asteroid were headed for us.

DART's impact displaced over two million pounds of the moonlet into space and researchers are trying to learn just how much of the asteroid's displacement occurred as a result of the impact versus the recoil. Read more about DART and what comes next for the science team analyzing the impact and implications for planetary defense.

Alumnus John Moores (2008) was named Science Advisor to the President of Canada. He is the York Research Chair in Space Exploration at York University and is the Director of Technologies for Exo-Planetary Science with Canada's Collaborative Research and Training Experience Program. Dr. Moores previously held positions as Associate Dean of Research and Graduate studies for the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University.

Dr. Moores is a Participating Scientist on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission and contributed to the 2005 Cassini Huygens probe to Titan and to the Phoenix mission to Mars.

 

Congratulations to Dr. Barbara Cohen (2000), Principal Investigator for NASA's Lunar Flashlight, which launched successfully on Dec. 11 and has begun its four-month trip to the Moon. Lunar Flashlight is a small satellite on a mission to seek out surface water ice in permanently shadowed craters of the Moon's south pole. Flashlight fans can track the SmallSat using NASA's fully interactive Eyes on the Solar System tool.

Lunar Flashlight will use a near-rectilinear halo orbit – designed for energy efficiency – to take it as near as 9 miles to the lunar south pole. The SmallSat has a reflectometer equipped with four lasers that emit near-infrared light in wavelengths readily absorbed by surface water ice. If the lasers hit bare rock or regolith, the light will reflect back to the spacecraft. However, if the target absorbs the light, the presence of water ice would be indicated. The greater the absorption, the more ice there may be.

Data collected by Lunar Flashlight will be compared with observations made by other lunar missions to help reveal the distribution of surface water ice on the Moon for potential use by future astronauts.

Dr. Cohen is a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Read more about Lunar Flashlight.

LPL alumnus David Grinspoon (1989) was elected an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in astronomy for 2021. He was recognized as a AAAS Fellow for his distinguished research comparative terrestrial atmospheres with a particular focus on Venus, and for prolific public science communication via books, articles, lectures, and other media. 

Dr. Grinspoon is a Senior Scientist with the Planetary Science Institute. He has served on the science teams of several spacecraft missions and has published numerous papers on the evolution of the atmospheres, planets and potential biology of Earthlike planets. David has written and edited six books, including Lonely Planets the Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, which won a PEN Literary award for nonfiction, and Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future, named a Best Science Book of 2016 by NPR’s Science Friday. His articles have been published in prestigious journals and magazines; his Cosmic Relief column appears regularly in Sky & Telescope Magazine. 

In 2013, Dr. Grinspoon was appointed as the inaugural Chair of Astrobiology at the U.S. Library of Congress where he studied the human impact on Earth systems and organized a public symposium on the Longevity of Human Civilization. Grinspoon has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at four universities and online, given dozens of public lectures about climate change in the Solar System, and collaborated with numerous scholars from the humanities on the ethical, spiritual and political dimensions of space exploration. He has appeared widely on radio and television, including as a frequent guest-host of StarTalk Radio. The American Astronomical Society awarded him the Carl Sagan Medal for Public Communication of Planetary Science. Asteroid 22410 Grinspoon, a main-belt asteroid, is named after him. 

Dr. Kathryn (Kat) Volk, LPL Associate Staff Scientist, is the recipient of the 2022 Vera Rubin Early Career Prize. The Division on Dynamical Astronomy (DDA) of the American Astronomical Society awards the prize annually to recognize an early career dynamicist who demonstrates excellence in scientific research in dynamical astronomy, has had impact and influence on the field, and shows a promise of continued excellence as demonstrated by past practice in research, teaching, and the advancement and support of the field of dynamical astronomy.

Kat is a 2013 alumna of LPL, completing her Ph.D. under the direction of Regents Professor Renu Malhotra. She uses theory, numerics, and observations in her research, which spans both Solar System and exoplanetary science.

Dr. Volk has made fundamental contributions to the observational characterization of small-body populations through her core role in the Outer Solar System Origins Survey and her work to apply her extensive numerical investigations to theoretical models of the early Solar System. Her research has been influential in quantifying the rates at which Jupiter-family comets are generated from their hypothesized source in the scattered disk beyond Neptune and in characterizing the underlying resonant trans-Neptunian object populations as observational anchors for theories of the early Solar System.

Dr. Volk has also significantly shaped the field of exoplanetary science with her influential proposal that most planetary systems begin in compact configurations and her fundamental contributions to our understanding of the long-term dynamical stability of exoplanetary systems. Kat's research demonstrates that the future lifetimes of mature exoplanet systems are set by slow chaotic diffusion induced by the overlap of secular (rather than mean-motion) resonances.

Dr. Volk will give the prize lecture at the 54th annual DDA meeting in the spring of 2023.

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