Congratulations to Bill Boynton, who received in May the Exceptional Public Service Medal for the TEGA investigation on the PHOENIX Mars Mission. The exceptional Public Service Medal is the second highest award that NASA gives to non-government personnel.
Faculty News
Congratulations to Research Professor Emeritus Martin Tomasko on receipt of the 2010 Alvin Seiff award. The Alvin Seiff Memorial Award, presented annually at the International Planetary Probe Workshop, recognizes and honors a scientist, engineer, technologist, or mission planner for outstanding career achievements and contributions to the understanding of planetary (including Titan) atmospheres utilizing high speed entry probes.
The citation for this award reads as follows:
Dr. Martin Tomasko, University of Arizona
In recognition of seminal contributions to the development of instrumentation for in situ studies of planetary atmospheres, including the Venus atmosphere from the Pioneer multiprobe mission, the Jupiter atmosphere from the Galileo probe, and the Titan atmosphere from the Huygens probe, and for career achievements in the understanding of the composition, cloud structure, and heat balance of planetary atmospheres throughout the solar system, the IOC of International Planetary Probe workshop bestows the 2010 Alvin Seiff award upon Dr. Martin Tomasko.
More information about the Alvin Seiff Memorial Award is available on the Planetary Probe site.
Professor Emeritus Robert Strom has been elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA). Bob's election was published in the July issue of "GSA Today" and will be announced at the Presidential Address and Awards Ceremony at the GSA Annual Meeting in Denver on October 30.
On April 27, Jonathan Lunine, Professor of Planetary Sciences and Physics, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. This election is considered one of the highest honors a U.S. scientist or engineer can achieve. Jonathan joins previously elected PTYS/LPL Professors Donald M. Hunten, J. Randy Jokipii, and H. Jay Melosh in election to the National Academy.
Lunine joins 72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 14 countries selected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Those elected this year bring the total number of active members to 2,097. Lunine is the only newly elected member from Arizona.
Professor Richard "Koz" Kozlowski died on July 12, 2011. Koz was a long-time visiting professor at LPL and worked extensively on spectroscopic studies of Mercury, the Moon, and Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Ann Sprague and Don Hunten.
Professor Kozlowski's home institution, Susquehanna University, issued a memorial notice.
Alfred McEwen, professor of planetary science at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and principal investigator of the largest imaging campaign ever launched to another planet, has been awarded NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest NASA honor given to a non-government employee.
McEwen accepted the award on June 30 during a ceremony at the NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
As the principal investigator on the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, McEwen oversees the most ambitious undertaking ever launched to image another planet. HiRISE has yielded stunning photographs in unprecedented detail that have dramatically changed our view of the Red Planet.
Under McEwen's leadership, the HiRISE mission team has gone out of its way to serve not only the science community but also the general public by making efforts to release the data as quickly as possible after they become available and making them accessible via user-friendly tools.
Nicknamed the "people's camera," the HiRISE camera has been aimed at imaging targets on Mars chosen by members of the public through a program called HiWish, which started last year.
"This award really recognizes the whole HiRISE team," McEwen said. "It's a joint effort involving hundreds of people, including those who developed the instrument, especially at Ball Aerospace, to the experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who have run the mission, to the people at Lockheed Martin where the spacecraft was built. And then there are those here at the UA of course, who run the camera and collect the scientific data, interpret them and make them available to the scientific community as well as the public."
According to NASA, the Distinguished Public Service Medal is granted only to individuals whose distinguished accomplishments contributed substantially to the NASA mission. The contribution must be so extraordinary that other forms of recognition would be inadequate.
McEwen said the HiRISE mission has made it possible to really understand active surface processes on Mars.
"For the first time we have the resolution and the capability to repeatedly image places to observe change of the surface that we did not know about before. We did not know whether the Martian sand dunes were active or not � now we do. We now know there are gullies that are active in the wintertime when there is carbon dioxide in the ground. Other features are active in the summer. If we want to understand geology, it's so much better to see things change instead of trying to interpret a static picture."
After working at the U.S. Geological Survey's Branch of Astrogeology in Flagstaff, McEwen obtained a doctorate in planetary geology at Arizona State University before joining LPL in 1996.
He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and is the recipient of numerous NASA Group Achievement Awards for his contributions to planetary missions.
HiRISE has been crucial in helping NASA assess and select landing sites for future missions such as the Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL, set to launch this fall. The size of a small SUV, MSL is the largest rover ever built to explore the Martian surface.
"Selecting a site for landing and roving is a balance of science potential and engineering constraints or risk," McEwen explained. "One site may be more scientifically promising but also more risky."
To date, after five years of circling the Red Planet, the HiRISE camera has imaged 1.3 percent of its surface. But according to McEwen, global coverage was never intended to or even hoped for this experiment.
At a resolution of roughly a foot per pixel, it would take many pixels to cover Mars, and even at the highest data rate of any previous deep space mission it takes a long time to cover Mars at that scale.
HiRISE is complemented by another camera, called the Context Camera, or CTX, which shoots pictures at 6 meters per pixel. CTX already has covered 60 percent and with a few more mission extension, probably could achieve full coverage of the Martian terrain.
McEwen is also the principal investigator on an upcoming Mars imaging program called High-resolution Stereo Color Imager, or HiSCI, for the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, set to launch in January 2016. As part of the joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency, or ESA, the UA-operated HiSCI camera will deliver high-resolution stereo color imaging at a much wider coverage than HiRISE.
HiSCI's primary mission is to measure trace gases in the Martian atmosphere. For this purpose, the spacecraft will carry two spectrometers to analyze trace gases using ultraviolet to infrared spectroscopy.
Michael J. Drake was born July 8, 1946 in Bristol, England. He grew up in England and attended college at Victoria University of Manchester where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology with honors in 1967. Mike earned his Ph.D. in Geology working with Dan Weill at the University of Oregon. After a spending a year as a postdoctoral research associate with John Wood at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Mike migrated to the University of Arizona, where he remained for the rest of his career. In Tucson he met and married his wife Gail Georgenson and together they have two well-accomplished children Matthew and Melissa and one granddaughter Elsie. Mike became a naturalized citizen of the United States and was a proud American.
Mike was an accomplished scientist with well over 100 published peer-reviewed papers. He was a master at synthesizing diverse constraints and constructing a coherent picture of events of huge scale. Some examples are his models for lunar basalt petrogenesis, magma ocean crystallization on the Earth, Mars, and Vesta, and the impact origin of the Moon. His body of published work contributed an enormous amount to our understanding of the formation, differentiation, solidification, and outgassing of planetesimals and planets. For his doctoral research Mike studied trace-element partitioning by developing an electron probe technique for rare earth element (REE) analysis. Mike focused especially on REE partitioning in plagioclase, which proved critical to understanding the formation of the feldspathic lunar crust. His work on REE geochemistry also led to his convincing study that Vesta is the source of the HED meteorites.
Mike went on to study a wide range of planetary materials including lunar and Martian meteorites. His principal research interests involved "big picture" questions of the formation and evolution of the solar system. Mike is best known for his studies on the partitioning of elements with affinities for metal or sulfide phases (Ga, Ge, P, V, Cr, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Mo, Sn, Co, W). Many of his experiments were carried out at very high pressures to simulate fractionation during core formation. These very difficult experiments provided critical data for assessing the accretion and differentiation histories of the Earth, the Moon, the terrestrial planets, and their meteorite building blocks. Mike's careful experiments had a profound effect because he has used the results with great insight to understand the geochemical processes that happen as planets evolve. In his final years he studied the origin of water in the terrestrial planets and pioneered the idea that adsorption of water on silicate grain surfaces was a mechanism by which the terrestrial planets accreted.
Mike's breadth of research expertise led to his achieving the rank of Professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), the Arizona Research Laboratories, and the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona. He was appointed Head of the Department of Planetary Sciences and Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in 1994, a position he held until 2011. His numerous contributions to the University of Arizona were recognized in 2005 when he was appointed as Regents' Professor. Under his leadership LPL successfully built and flew a variety of spacecraft instruments including the Imager for Mars Pathfinder, the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) on Cassini/Huygens, the IMAGE Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, and the Gamma-ray Spectrometer Suite on Mars Odyssey. In addition, under Mike's leadership LPL scientists were selected as Team Leader on the Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer on the Cassini mission and the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Under his watch, LPL built the Surface Stereo Imager and Robotic Arm cameras and the TEGA instrument on Phoenix, and successfully operated Phoenix on the Martian surface from the University of Arizona campus.
Mike received many accolades for his research accomplishments. He was named a fellow of the Meteoritical Society in 1980, the American Geophysical Union in 2002, and the Geochemical Society in 2002. He was a founding fellow of the Arizona Arts, Sciences and Technology Academy. He served as Vice-President then President of the Meteoritical Society from 1997-1998 and the Geochemical Society from 1996-1999. He was awarded the Leonard Medal of the Meteoritical Society in 2004. Asteroid (9022) 1988 PC1 was named Drake in his honor by Carolyn Shoemaker. Mike played a key role in defining the planetary science research priorities of the United States, serving on the NASA Space Science Advisory Committee, the Lunar Exploration Science Working Group and as Chair of the NASA Solar System Exploration Subcommittee, among many other service commitments.
As his crowning achievement, Mike had the vision to develop the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return mission concept. His leadership of the OSIRIS-REx team was instrumental in its success of moving into a selected flight mission project. The scientific goals of the mission are to investigate the possibility of asteroid delivery of prebiotic molecules to Earth and Mars, to connect the meteorite collection to the astronomical asteroid spectral database, to investigate near-Earth resources that may be used by humans going to the Moon and Mars, and to improve our ability to mitigate against devastating near-Earth object impacts. As the mission leader Mike established the OSIRIS-REx guiding philosophy of obtaining excellence at every level, allowing for clear and open communication across all levels of the team, and staying focused on the mission objectives. He left no stone unturned and took extreme efforts to establish a multi-generational strategy for mission management that will ensure mission success.
Mike was a leader in the scientific community. More importantly he had the insight to ensure he had the time for his students and always encouraged them to follow their own ideas and take chances. Mike was a dedicated educator and a strong believer in supporting the next generation of scientists and leaders. He received the UA College of Science Career Distinguished Teaching Award in 1999 and the University of Arizona Senior Honorary BobCats Outstanding Faculty Member Award in 2006. He inspired many young planetary scientists as the Director of State of Arizona Space Grant Consortium from 2000 to 2011. He served as the University of Arizona representative to the Universities Space Research Association from 2000 to 2011 and served on the Board of Trustees for the Universities Space Research Association from 2007 to 2011. Mike's ability to inspire and support the next generation of scientific leaders ensures that his legacy will continue well into the future.
Kudos to PTYS/LPL adjunct faculty member Steven Kortenkamp, recipient of the 2011 College of Science Innovation in Teaching Award.
Steve regularly teaches one of our Tier II General Education classes---PTYS 206 (Golden Age of Planetary Exploration). His teaching evaluations are consistently excellent and his approach to the course is always innovative. Whether it is adopting a new approach to testing (lottery-ticket-style exams that give students instant feedback) or programming his own animations of celestial relationships when he finds the existing ones inadequate, he doesn't feel confined by how things have been done before. Steve has begun trying to improve K-12 education in the topics he is teaching. He is moving toward making his animations available to K-12 teachers, using the lessons learned from his work in the classroom here to have a wider impact on astronomy education at all levels. Taking the idea of pre-college preparation even a step further, he is also the author of a series of well-received astronomy-oriented books for children.
When he is not teaching college students or writing science texts for children, Steve is a full-time Senior Scientist at the Planetary Research Institute in Tucson.
Congratulations, Steve!
In May of this year, Joe Giacalone was promoted to Professor (from Associate Professor with tenure). Congratulations, Joe!
Congratulations to Professor Jon Pelletier (Dept. of Geosciences and PTYS/LPL), who was named a 2012 Galileo Circle Fellow. This is one of the highest honors bestowed upon faculty in the College of Science.
These awards, established through the generosity of Galileo Circle members, recognize outstanding accomplishments in academic scholarship. Each Fellow receives $5,000 and lifetime membership in the Galileo Circle.
Galileo Circle Fellows are the epitome of the academic scholar, with a deep understanding over a broad range of science, a willingness to think in a truly interdisciplinary way, and an ability to inspire colleagues and students alike.
Congratulations, Jon!