Fall

We would like to thank all those who have donated to LPL in 2018 and 2019. Thanks to everyone for helping LPL accomplish things we would not be able to without you. 

by Dolores Hill

This fall, LPL staff and students were busy reaching out not only to the local community but all of Arizona as well. Several events centered around moonfest, the University of Arizona’s extended celebration of the Apollo moon landings and future lunar exploration. We were able to “multiply our impact” at many public events with engagement by the Space Imagery Center, LPL Graduate Student Outreach, and OSIRIS-REx, thereby allowing us to reach more than 7000 people.

Spacefest brought together astronauts, artists, and space aficionados from all over the world including quite a few LPL alumni and longtime “friends of LPL” who stopped by the STEAM tables to say hello! We provided educational activities and exhibits for a range of ages and backgrounds from the STEM Showcase at Ocotillo Ridge Elementary School to Southern Arizona Technology Council industry leaders at the Tucson Convention Center. We presented the OSIRIS-REx mission’s “Final Four” Candidate sites in UArizona’s Research Innovation and Impact (RII) tent during UArizona homecoming and the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter Office and Science Shop open house that coincided with the transit of Mercury.

LPL and baseball? Sure! On July 20, LPL joined Raytheon for Space Day at the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game in Phoenix and also provided an assortment of OSIRIS-REx hands-on activities and demonstrations for Goddard Space Flight Center’s STEM Education Day at Fenway Park in Boston. LPL Director Tim Swindle kindly volunteered to staff the Diamondbacks outreach event—double duty on July 20 after hosting LPL’s Summer Science Saturday Apollo anniversary celebration in Tucson. In addition to external community events, we conducted OSIRIS-REx and meteorite tours for Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory volunteers and presentations for Kitt Peak docents, IEEE Tucson and Sierra Vista, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Prescott Astronomy Club, and the Huachuca Astronomy Club. Summer and fall were jam-packed with wonderful opportunities to showcase LPL and our contributions to planetary science, past, present, and future.

OSIRIS-REx engineer Josh Nelson answers questions from Space Shuttle astronaut Linda Godwin in the Spacefest STEAM area. (Godwin was a crewmate of LPL  alumnus astronaut Tom Jones on STS-59).

Graduate student Indujaa Ganesh, ready to share many worlds at Spacefest 2019.

The Curson Travel Award supported my travel to Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy, to participate in the 3^rd Advanced School for Exoplanetary Science (ASES3) from 27^th – 31^st of May 2019. This year, the workshop focused on the demographics of planetary systems and was attended by early career exoplanetary scientists from all over the globe. The workshop was structured around a series of lectures by five of the leading researchers in the field: Dr. Scott Gaudi (The Ohio State University), Dr. Andrew Howard (California Institute of Technology), Dr. Alessandro Morbidelli (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur), Dr. Sean Raymond (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux) and Dr. Antonino Lanza (Astrophysical Observatory of Catania). Each day, we had 4-6 hours of lectures on the topics of planet formation and dynamical evolution, star-planet interactions as well as observations and statistics from radial velocity and transit surveys (for close-in exoplanets), and microlensing, astrometry and direct imaging surveys (for wide-separation exoplanets).

I was fortunate enough to be one of the handful of school participants that were selected to give a short oral presentation on their research. My presentation, titled Hints for a Turnover at the Snowline in the Giant Planet Distribution, was focused on the first project I worked on at LPL with my advisor, Dr. Ilaria Pascucci, and Dr. Gijs Mulders. During this talk, I discussed our newly published result that shows a pile up in the distribution of giant planets at the snowline and its implications for (exo)planetary formation and migration. It was really nice to see our result gain the same amount of positive attention in the European exoplanetary community as it had in the American community.

The workshop also arranged a few outdoor social events for the participants. We visited the Archaeological Park of Paestum, which is home to three magnificent Doric temples that are thought to be dedicated to the city’s namesake Poseidon, Hera and Ceres. We also went on a boat tour of the Amalfi coast and explored the cobblestone streets and lush gardens of the city of Ravello. On the last day, we hiked the Paths of the Gods, a clifftop trail above the Amalfi coast which began in Agerola and ended in Nocelle, the upper part of Positano. The breathtaking views of the Amalfi Coast and the island of Capri made the two-hour long hike worthwhile.

Attending this workshop was highly beneficial to me as an early career scientist for the reason that unlike large conferences, the ASES3 workshop offered an ideal opportunity for networking and forming collaborations with an international group of students and experts in exoplanetary science which was important in formulating long- and short-term research ideas.

Jada Walters is the recipient of the 2019 Carson Fellowship Award, which provides one academic year of support, including salary, tuition, and a supply stipend. Jada is a first-year graduate student at LPL.  

Jada is an avid reader, and from childhood, the books that she liked best were science fiction novels that allowed her to visit faraway planets and galaxies. It didn’t stop at books—she also looked forward to watching episodes of Star Trek with her parents and playing space adventure games like Star Control II. As she grew up, her interest in space exploration grew as well, expanding to include the branches of science that enable humanity to explore our universe past the confines of our planet. She began to realize that scientific research was the avenue through which she would be able to understand and visit other planets beyond the pages of a book.

Jada attended the Georgia Institute of Technology from 2015 to 2018, graduating with a B.S. in Physics with a concentration in Astrophysics. While an undergraduate, she had the opportunity to research in multiple areas. Her first exposure to research was with Dr. Heidi Newberg at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. As part of a 10-week summer REU program, she conducted research on the local velocity substructure of the Milk Way Galaxy using the Gaia and PPMXL catalogs. Jada was lucky enough to experience the practical scientific process during this time, complete with unexpected discrepancies, multiple dead-ends, and a glimmer of progress towards answering the physics questions motivating the research that made it all worth it. She returned to Georgia Tech certain that she wanted to continue research, but she wasn’t sure in what area. By chance, a class that she never planned to take shifted her research focus entirely.

After being waitlisted for an aerodynamics class, she stumbled upon an introductory space plasma physics course offered by the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences while looking to fill the gap in her schedule. That course, and the professor who taught it (Dr. Carol Paty), steered her in a new direction. She began to research Europa’s plasma environment with Dr. Paty and learned about the spacecraft mission applications of plasma physics research. Her interest in plasma physics continued into solar physics. As part of an REU at Montana State University, Jada worked in Dr. Dana Longcope’s research group. There, she researched magnetic reconnection in the solar corona using SDO data of emerging active regions.

At LPL, Jada is continuing to research in plasma physics, this time applied to the solar wind, with Dr. Kristopher Klein. She hopes to continue on to a career in research that allows her to apply theory and computer models to relevant spacecraft data.