Fall

Two PTYS graduate students were awarded Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science Technology (FINESST) awards in 2019:

• Indujaa Ganesh, Plumes and Pyroclasts: Understanding the Dynamics of Explosive Volcanism on Venus (advisor: Lynn Carter)
• Allison McGraw, Observational Campaign for the Gefion Asteroid Family (advisor: Vishnu Reddy). 

Geosciences student Brandon Tober, advised by Professor Jack Holt, also received a FINESST award for A New Regional View of Alaskan Glaciers: Bed Elevation, Ice Thickness, and Flux.

Assistant Professor Jessica Barnes was profiled by Nature magazine (10 July 2019) as a researcher whose work will shape the next 50 years of lunar research.

Assistant Professor Lynn Carter was named a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Assistant Professor Kristopher Klein received the 2019 NASA Early Career Investigator Program (Heliophysics) Award in the first year of the program.

Professor Amy Mainzer has been elected Vice Chair of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. The position is a one-year term (2019-2020).

Professor Adam Showman was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU); this honor is reserved for 0.1% for the AGU's membership each year. Professor Showman was recognized at Honors Tribute during the fall 2019 AGU meeting.

Dr. Robert McMillan, Associate Research Scientist and Principal Investigator for the SPACEWATCH® program at LPL, retired on June 30, 2019. Bob began his career at LPL in 1979 as a Research Associate and became an Associate Research Scientist in 1995. Although he has “retired,” Bob is still managing SPACEWATCH® and scanning the skies from Kitt Peak. The SPACEWATCH® team had the pleasure this summer of hosting a celebration to congratulate Bob on his long career and retirement, and to wish him clear skies on his upcoming observing runs.

by Christopher Hamilton

For the Fall 2019 semester (October 17–21), the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) graduate student field trip class (PTYS 594A) ventured to the Zuni–Bandera Volcanic Field in New Mexico. The volcanic field is part of the Jemez Lineament, which extends from central Arizona to northeastern New Mexico. The Jemez Lineament includes approximately 100 volcanoes, which erupted during the past 16 Ma. This semester’s field trip primarily focused on lava tubes within the Hoya de Cibola lava flow-field, lava stratigraphy and inflation features within McCarty's lava flow-field, and Bandera Crater.

During the first day of the field trip, the group met with members of the National Park Service and travelled with Ranger Nicholas (“Nick”) Poister to the Haltun Cave. This provided students with a unique opportunity to explore an exceptional lava tube system within the El Malpais National Monument. On the second and third days, the class examined 20 m (65’) thick lava flow units within the McCarty's lava flow-field. This approximately 3000-year-old lava flow-field was emplaced over older Hoya de Cibola lava units as well as Holocene alluvial sediments. McCarty's lava flow units include outstanding examples of inflation features, which formed as the flows were supplied by lava through internal pathways and gradually swelled like a balloon. Similar structures are identified on Mars and provide valuable information about eruption timescales. Additionally, using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements, the class examined McCarty's lava units, estimating their thickness and identifying buried contacts with older materials (i.e., lava and sedimentary units) as analogs for imaging subsurface interfaces within volcanic terrains on Mars using the shallow radar (SHARAD) instrument. During the final day of the field trip, they visited Bandera Crater and an “ice cave” formed where meteoric water infiltrates into a cold lava tube to form perennial ice deposits.

This semester’s field trip involved the increased usage of high-tech (e.g., GPR and GPS) and low-tech (e.g., notebooks, measuring tape, compass, and hand lens) tools to develop detailed measurements and descriptions, with a focus on lava tube and other lava flow structures as analogs for volcanic terrains on the Moon and Mars, as well as elsewhere in the Solar System. Next semester, the field trip will explore a different region of the Southwest, with a trip to the Mojave Desert.