A study led by Professor Erik Asphaug suggests that the protoplanet most likely hit Earth twice. The first time, the impactor (dubbed "Theia") only glanced off Earth. Then, some hundreds of thousands of years later, it came back to deliver the final blow.
Professor Amy Mainzer is Principal Investigator for NEOWISE and for NEO Surveyor, two space missions designed to survey the Solar System for potentially hazardous objects—so it's no wonder that she was selected to be the science advisor for the Netflix film, Don't Look Up. In this Wired interview, Professor Mainzer breaks down a few scenes from film and explores the science behind near-Earth objects. Read more about Professor Mainzer's work on the film in the article from Universe Today.
The University of Arizona has once again been recognized as one of the world's top 100 research institutions by U.S. News & World Report.
UArizona ranked No. 99 out of 1,750 higher education institutions across 90 countries in the 2022 Best Global Universities ranking. The university was No. 42 among universities in the U.S. and No. 22 among public universities.
"It is gratifying to see the University of Arizona listed alongside many of the world's premier academic research institutions," said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins. "Our university is home to many breathtaking scientific innovations, and it is upon this foundation that our faculty members seek to make further extraordinary discoveries."
U.S. News & World Report's Best Global Universities ranks colleges and universities in 43 separate subjects – up from 38 the year before. The University of Arizona earned a spot on 32 of the subject rankings lists.
UArizona earned its top placement in the space science category, placing No. 10 overall, No. 7 in the U.S. and No. 2 among public universities – all up one spot from last year's rankings. The university earned top marks for its research reputation in space sciences, along with the number of citations and publications by UArizona researchers.
The university's overall research reputation ranked No. 46 in the U.S. and No. 93 globally.
"The resolve and innovative spirit of researchers across campus are at the heart of the university's outstanding research reputation," said Elizabeth "Betsy" Cantwell, senior vice president for research and innovation. "From our commitment to building resilience amid a swiftly changing climate, to our leadership of NASA's groundbreaking OSIRIS-REx mission returning an asteroid sample to Earth, to our pioneering work understanding individualized health needs through the NIH-funded All of Us Program, University of Arizona research creates real-world solutions in nearly every scientific discipline."
UArizona earned top-100 global placements for its programs in geosciences (No. 26), arts and humanities (tied for No. 42), environment/ecology (No. 42), plant/animal sciences (No. 53) and biotechnology and applied microbiology (No. 86).
The eighth annual Best Global Universities rankings are produced to provide insight into how research institutions compare throughout the world. The rankings focus specifically on schools' academic research and reputation overall. To produce the global rankings, which are based on data and metrics provided by analytics company Clarivate, U.S. News & World Report uses a methodology that focuses on 13 indicators to measure research performance.
Indujaa Ganesh
Stefano Nerozzi
Graduate student Indujaa Ganesh and postdoctoral Research Associate Stefano Nerozzi have been selected to be part of the Early Career Team for the Mars Ice Mapper Reconnaissance/Science Measurement Definition group team. Indujaa is a fifth-year Ph.D. student advised by Associate Professor Lynn Carter. Her mission expertise is radar (SAR/Sounding/Modeling), lunar landing site characterization (hazards, ice favorability), and imaging. Stefano's expertise is radar (sounding/GPR), geophysical glacial surveys, geomechanical stability, geomorphology, analogues, and atmosphere.
The Core Team includes Professor Shane Byrne (radar, ice detection, surface roughness, geology, imaging, landing site analysis, atmosphere, GIS) and LPL alumni Ali Bramson (radar, midlatitude ice distribution, polar studies, landing site analysis, analogues, ice coring) and Catherine Neish (radar, ice detection, surface roughness, analogues, imaging, astrobiology).
NASA and three international partners have signed a statement of intent to advance Mars Ice Mapper, a possible robotic Mars ice mapping mission, which could help identify abundant, accessible ice for future candidate landing sites on the Red Planet. The agencies have agreed to establish a joint concept team to assess mission potential, as well as partnership opportunities. If the concept moves forward, the mission could be ready to launch as early as 2026.
Four science and operations teams conducted a variety of scientific investigations and field equipment tests at sites in and around the Askja caldera. One science team investigated the soils in the region using handheld instruments similar to those onboard Mars rovers. This allows for a direct comparison between their field measurements and those on Mars to help determine what the rovers are observing. Another team operated a drone to take high-resolution images of the surface. They provided aerial imagery of other team’s field sites and continued their long-term monitoring of Mars-like aeolian processes like gravel ripple migration happening around the caldera.
The last science team was the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) team, which I had the opportunity to join. The team has been mapping the extent and thickness of ice deposits buried beneath pumice, ash, and other tephra from eruptions of Askja in 1875 and 1961. These ice deposits are potentially analogous to those found on Mars or the Moon. Combining the confirmed GPR observations of subsurface ice with airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observations over the Askja caldera allows the team to simulate what future orbital radar systems could observe on Mars. This will be used to determine what a signal from ice would look like from orbital SAR systems in the future. The GPR team has also been monitoring these ice deposits over two field seasons to track any changes between 2019 and 2021 as the long-term stability of this ice is threatened by the warming climate. The ice deposits have been found to be as thin as 10 centimeters and thicker than 2.5 meters in some regions buried beneath up to 40 centimeters of tephra.
I am currently analyzing the collected radar data over the last two field seasons to calculate the thickness and extent of buried ice deposits across the floor of the Askja caldera. I'm also focusing on modifying existing GPR analysis techniques to aid in identifying the signature of buried ice and which radar frequencies are best suited for mapping shallow ice deposits such as these.
|
Top left: Zach Morse (NASA GSFC), Emileigh Shoemaker, and Jacob Richardson (NASA GSFC) take a traverse with the 900 MHz ground-penetrating radar (GPR) antenna over a tephra deposit from 1961 where they suspect buried ice is present. These systems take at least two people to operate with one pushing the antenna across the surface and the other monitoring the data in real-time for quality control. Top right: GPR team lead David Hollibaugh Baker (NASA GSFC) confirms buried ice beneath pumice erupted in 1875 and takes a sample for later laboratory analysis. These trenches also help determine the depths at which the GPR is detecting ice. Bottom: A hand sample of ice buried beneath 1875 pumice. This ice is fairly pure and has closed pore spaces, creating the solitary bubbles seen in the sample. |
Nathan Hadland received a Geological Society of America Graduate Student Research Grant in support of his research on thermophilic life in hot springs in Iceland. The funding paid for the sequencing of DNA samples to determine the taxonomic diversity of those ecosystems. Nathan explains that it is possible that hot springs similar to those in Iceland may have formed on Mars in the past, and that characterizing the organisms that occupy similar environments on Earth can shed light into the types of life possible on Mars.
Nathan is a second-year doctoral student working with associate professors Solange Duhamel and Christopher Hamilton. His research interests include astrobiology and planetary surfaces.
Alumna Michelle Thompson (2016), an assistant professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, is on a team that will analyze Moon rocks and lunar soil samples from the Apollo 17 mission.
