Fall

LPL alum (1978) Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, discusses the institution's past, present, and future roles in the dialogue between faith and science.

LPL alumnus Jonathan Fortney (2004), professor of astronomy and astrophysics at U.C. Santa Cruz, has been appointed by the Simons Foundation as a Simons Investigator in Astrophysics. The award provides $500,000 over five years to support his research on planetary atmospheres. The Simons Investigator program supports outstanding theoretical scientists most productive years, when they are establishing creative new research directions, providing leadership to the field and effectively mentoring junior scientists. Fortney studies the atmospheres, interiors, and thermal evolution of planets, including exoplanets, and develops numerical models to explore many aspects of the physics of planets.

There are 25 undergraduate students pursuing their minor program of study in Planetary Sciences. These students have varied major home departments, including Astronomy, Engineering, Chemistry, and Geosciences. We're proud to profile one of our undergraduate minor students in this semester's newsletter.

David Cantillo

Planetary science has always been appealing to me because it connects my research interests in astronomy with a more hands-on, geological perspective. When I heard that the University of Arizona was offering planetary sciences as a minor, it was an easy choice my freshman year of college.

What has been your favorite Planetary Sciences class and why? 

They've all been great, though the most influential was certainly the comets class (PTYS 4/595B, Observational Campaigns, Professor Walt Harris) that I took my first semester. I quickly learned that comets can be extremely dynamic and complex bodies, and the class was a wonderful introduction to graduate students I'm still in touch with now. The trip up to the 61" telescope on Mt. Bigelow is also something I'll always remember!

What are your future goals?

I would love to earn a doctoral degree and work in small bodies, space situational awareness, and/or astrobiology research.

Are you working on any current research projects?

Most recently, I was working on a project with Dr. Vishnu Reddy where we made a laboratory regolith mixture that matched the surface composition of the large metallic asteroid 16 Psyche. Finding Psyche's surface composition was an extremely rewarding project and I was excited to help contribute to the field with my first lead-author paper. Now, I'm working on a similar project where I'm looking at 16 Psyche in the visible range of light with groundbased telescopes at Biosphere II. From this, we hope to better constrain the nature of hydration on its surface.

Tell us about yourself.

In high school, I was really into astrophotography and would travel around Maryland to find the best spots without light pollution. This is largely what led me to study planetary sciences in the first place. Now, I've been focused on music throughout college. I've played guitar and bass in local bands for the past four years, and I'm the singer and lead songwriter for my current band, Daytrails. We played a show at this year's Art of Planetary Science and released our first single the same day.

I have my research advisor, Dr. Vishnu Reddy, to thank for helping me navigate the world of planetary science and college itself. He cares a lot about his students and I can't thank him enough for helping me get where I am today. Throughout the pandemic, he's been extremely compassionate and a great mentor.

  Sara Knutson

  Anjani Polit

Sara Knutson and Anjani Polit were each recognized by NASA for their outstanding work with the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Sara received an individual Robert H. Goddard Award for her work as Science Operations Lead Engineer at the OSIRIS-REx Science Processing and Operations Center. The citation for Sara’s Exceptional Achievement Award for Engineering reads, "For systems engineering excellence, teamwork, and leadership of the science implementation activities on the OSIRIS-REx mission.” 

Anjani and the OSIRIS-REx Planning and Implementation team she leads were honored with the Robert H. Goddard Award for their outstanding work in planning the science observations of Bennu. Anjani was previously awarded a Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement Award for Engineering by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Goddard Awards recognize exemplary achievements in spaceflight.

Congratulations to LPL alums Nancy Chabot (1999), DART Coordination Lead, and Andy Rivkin (1997), DART Co-Investigation Team Lead. On November 24, NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. DART is heading to the near-Earth binary asteroid Didymos, where, in September 2022, it will smash into Didymos' moonlet, called Dimorphos. The goal is to test if the technique, which will alter Dimorphos' speed and, consequently, its orbit around Didymos, could be used to defend the Earth from potential impactors.

Learn more about DART from Nancy and Andy at the links below:

• Gravity Assist: How to Move an Asteroid, with Nancy Chabot
• In a First Test of Its Planetary Defense Efforts, NASA's Going to Shove an Asteroid
• NASA is ramming a spacecraft into an asteroid as part of a planetary defense test mission
• NASA’s DART Mission Could Help Cancel an Asteroid Apocalypse

We would like to thank all those who have donated to LPL in 2021. Thanks to everyone for supporting research, education, and outreach at LPL.

Indujaa Ganesh is the recipient of an Amelia Earhart Fellowship for 2021. The $10,000 fellowship is awarded each year by Zonta International to up to 35 women pursuing doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering and space sciences. The fellowship was established in 1938 in honor of Amelia Earhart, famed pilot and member of the Zonta Clubs of Boston and New York. Indujaa is a fifth-year student working with Associate Professor Lynn Carter. 

In the spring 2021 newsletter, we reported that Indujaa received the 2021 Curson Travel Award; you can read more about her research and recent summer field work by visiting the the Curson Travel Award site. 

On the first day of our trip, we travelled to Texas Canyon, where we visited the Triangle T Guest Ranch and exceptional granite outcrops with spherical weathering. Folks at the ranch kindly let our group explore the rock formations and guided us to see exceptional Native American petroglyphs. We then visited Willcox Playa and hiked to Fort Bowie to learn more about the region’s cultural history. The next day, we explored Chiricahua National Monument, including ancient volcanoes with spectacular hoodoo formations eroded into the 27-million-year-old Turkey Creek ignimbrite deposit. Our group of sixteen visited Massai Point, hiked the "Echo Canyon Trail," and climbed to the top of Sugarloaf to see the exceptional geologic history exposed within the walls of the valley.

For the final day or our trip, we crossed into Cave Creek Canyon, which is the largest and most biologically diverse canyon in the region. We then visited the Chiricahua Desert Museum and explored monogenetic volcanoes in San Bernardino Volcanic Field, which include exceptional mantle xenoliths. On the way home to Tucson, we enjoyed the final student presentations with ice cream in Tombstone. After two-years, it was great to explore the beautiful geology and cultural history of the Southwest again, and students are looking forward to exploring the Mojave Desert next semester with Professor Shane Byrne.

You can support the LPL field trip with a gift to the Wilkening-Sill endowment.