Spring

It's time for a change. After about a decade leading this wonderful organization, I've just retired, and Mark Marley has taken over as Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Head of the Department of Planetary Sciences. It's been a great decade for me, and I'm satisfied with where LPL is in many ways (although there are always things that a person wishes they'd done better), but, again, it's time for a change, and I'm thrilled that it's Mark. He's an LPL alum (the first one to become Director), an accomplished scientist, and he's got lots of good ideas for ways to move LPL forward. In the last 10 years, LPL has been able to hire some great scientists and teachers, has produced some outstanding graduates, and this brilliant bunch has produced more than enough great ideas and projects to keep this newsletter full. In fact, LPL has been so productive that we've started a monthly newsletter full of press releases about our science.

I hope you enjoy the newsletter, I hope you stay in touch with LPL, and I want to thank all the faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of LPL who have made this, as my predecessor Mike Drake once told me, "the best job on campus."

Timothy D. Swindle, Ph.D.

 

Heather Enos has retired from LPL. Heather served as Deputy Principal Investigator and Project Planning and Control Officer for the OSIRIS-REx mission. She began her career at LPL in 1997 with the Mars Odyssey Gamma Ray Spectrometer program. Heather has held key management roles in many other missions, including the Mars Phoenix Lander Mission, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover).

Heather is the recipient of several NASA Group Achievement Awards. In 2010, she received the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal. Heather was honored with the Robert H. Goddard Award for New Opportunities Captured for leadership in winning the OSIRIS-REx mission in 2014; and in 2018, Heather received the University of Arizona's Billy Joe Varney Award for Excellence.

Dr. Manpreet Singh joined LPL in March 2021 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Research Scientist Dr. Federico Fraschetti. Manpreet studies interplanetary and astrophysical collisionless shock waves and particle acceleration.

Manpreet is from Batala (Punjab, India). He obtained his B.Sc. (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics) in 2010 from Government College Gurdaspur (Punjab), and his M.Sc. (Applied Physics) in 2012 and Ph.D. with specialization in Space Plasma Physics in 2019 from the Department of Physics, Guru Nanak Dev University (Amritsar, Punjab). His Ph.D. research was focused on the theoretical study of dispersive Alfvén waves in multi-species and dusty plasmas in space environments. In 2013, Manpreet earned a Bachelor of Education degree with specialization in pedagogy of science and mathematics.

In his free time Manpreet likes to play cricket, watch science documentaries and science fiction movies, gardening, and travel to new places.

Thanks to the generous gifts from friends, family, and colleagues, the Showman Distinguished Visiting Lectureship, established in memory of LPL Professor Adam Showman, has been fully endowed. This fund will allow us to bring guest lecturers to the UArizona campus in Adam's memory, in perpetuity.

The first Adam P. Showman Distinguished Visiting Lecturer will be announced in the Fall of 2021. This distinguished scholar will engage with our students and share the latest scientific discoveries from among Adam’s great diversity of interests. We can think of no better way to honor both the joy Adam exhibited in his work and his broad perspective than by bringing an outstanding scholar that embodies the same passion for scientific discovery to campus.

Adam P. Showman passed away unexpectedly on March 16, 2020, at his home in Tucson, Arizona. The international planetary science community lost an outstanding theorist, dedicated teacher, and a sought-after collaborator to a world-wide network of exoplanet astronomers.

For years, the Kuiper Space Sciences Building has had an enigmatic object on the wall of the lobby, just inside of the front entrance. It isn't very colorful, so many haven't even noticed it, but it represents a creative mixture of art and science from the early days of LPL, and has a story that is much more colorful that the wall hanging itself. Thanks to Associate Professor of Practice Steve Kortenkamp and HiRISE Photogrammetry and Imaging Processing Scientist (and LPL Ph.D. candidate) Sarah Sutton, we now have a display to help put it in context.

In the 1960s, when LPL was mapping the Moon, Gerard Kuiper hired sculptor Ralph Turner to create 3D models of areas on the lunar surface. Turner would work with telescopic images taken under different lighting conditions and mold his clay until he had something whose shadows looked right as he moved his light to match the different illuminations he had available. It is one of these sculptures, the central peak of Alphonsus crater, that has been hanging on the wall for years.

Nearly sixty years later, we still value 3D representations of planetary surfaces, but we don't generate them the same way. Instead, modern 3D images are generated by digitally combining images taken by spacecraft from different angles as they pass over (or even on different passes).

The HiRISE team, led by Sarah, are masters at generating these for Mars and for other planetary objects as well, including the Moon. In particular, images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter were used to generate 3D models of the same area that Turner sculpted. The digital model was created by Nicholas Porter while he was an undergraduate student working in the HiRISE photogrammetry lab.

Instead of using clay, the preferred method for generating 3D models is now 3D printing. Steve has 3D printed models of planetary surfaces for use in instruction for visually impaired students.

By combining the talents of our staff and modern scientific techniques and manufacturing technologies, we produced a modern model of the same region, using both modern scientific techniques and modern manufacturing techniques, and have hung it on an adjacent wall, along with text to explain what the two images are all about. We have included pictures, but they're just two-dimensional, and don't give the sense of depth that either of the models on the wall give. 

Take a look at the models, old and new, the next time you are in the Kuiper Space Sciences Building.

Daniel Apai is an astrophysicist specializing in studies of extrasolar planets with the long-term goal of identifying planetary systems capable of supporting life. He studies the interface of planetary sciences and astronomy and holds a joint appointment with Steward Observatory. Professor Apai is Principal Investigator for Project EOS: Earths in Other Solar Systems, a NASA-funded astrobiology research team exploring the potential of nearby planetary systems for supporting life. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Nautilus Space Telescope, a space mission concept designed for a very large-scale biosignature survey. Dr. Apai is founder of Project EDEN, one of the largest programs searching for habitable worlds in the solar neighborhood. He served on a variety of science advisory boards and steering committees. Professor Apai has been with LPL since 2011.

Tom Zega joined LPL in 2011. He applies a microscopy- and microanalysis-based approach to study the chemical and physical evolution of the early solar system and ancient stars, specifically the origin of the circumstellar grains that formed in ancient stars, refractory inclusions that formed the first solar-system solids, primitive organic compounds, and development of analytical techniques for investigations of such materials.

Tom has developed two courses for the Planetary Sciences curriculum at LPL: Planetary Materials (with Dr. Krishna Muralidharan, MSE) and Nanoscale Analysis of Materials Using Transmission Electron Microscopy. He leads the Planetary Materials Research Group at LPL and is the Scientific Director as well as TEM/FIB Instrument Scientist for the Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility.

Dr. Dante Lauretta has been confirmed as a University of Arizona Regents Professor.

Professor Lauretta is an expert in near-Earth asteroid formation and evolution and Principal Investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission to collect and return material from the asteroid Bennu. OSIRIS-REx, the largest sponsored project ever conducted at UArizona, will likely yield fundamental knowledge about the origin of the terrestrial planets. The recently acquired sample will be delivered to Earth in 2023.

Professor Lauretta has taught at all levels, from undergraduate general education to graduate classes. He also has taught in multiple formats, from large-audience lectures and a TEDx talk to small seminar classes. He has served on advisory boards for both the College of Humanities and the Honors College.

In 2002, Dr. Lauretta was awarded the Alfred O. Nier Prize of the Meteoritical Society for "his experimental studies of iron-bearing sulfide formation in the solar system." He was selected as a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 and was recognized by Discover magazine in 2004 for a top-100 science discovery. In 2006, the UArizona College of Science honored him with a Distinguished Early Career Teaching Award.

The designation of Regents Professor is an honored position reserved for faculty scholars of exceptional ability who have achieved national or international distinction. The Regents Professor title serves as recognition of the highest academic merit and is awarded to faculty members who have made a unique contribution to the quality of the university through distinguished accomplishments in teaching, scholarship, research or creative work.

Research Professor Dr. Gilda Ballester joined LPL in 2000. Her interests include exoplanets, planetary formation and evolution, planetary astronomy, and planetary atmospheres.

Gilda conducted early research on Io's atmosphere and plasma torus, as well as on the upper atmospheres, auroras, and magnetospheric interactions of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus using both imaging and spectroscopy.

Gilda's work with the Hubble Space Telescope Panchromatic Comparative Exoplanet Treasury program focused on characterizing ultra-hot to hot Jupiters, warm exoplanets from Jupiter to super-Earth masses and their host stars based on observations and modeling. During the course of her career, Gilda built a large network of international collaborators.

Professor William Boynton is a Mission Instrument Scientist with OSIRIS-REx. As a cosmochemist, his research focused on understanding the role of volatile materials, chiefly water, carbon dioxide and argon, as probes for planetary processes. Since beginning his faculty career at LPL in 1977, Professor Boynton has been a member of eight other NASA flight missions, including as Principal Investigator for instruments on the Comet Rendezvous/Asteroid Flyby (Comet Penetrator-Lander) and Mars Odyssey 2001 (Gamma-Ray Spectrometer, GRS). He served as Team Leader for the Mars Observer GRS and for Geochemistry on Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Shoemaker Mission to Asteroid 433 Eros. As Co-Investigator with MESSENGER, Bill was responsible for data from the X-ray and gamma-ray spectrometers. As Co-I of Mars Phoenix Lander, he managed the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). Bill was also Co-I for the Cassini-Huygens Surface-Science Package.

Professor Boynton is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society and the recipient of four NASA Group Achievement Awards. In 2005, he was awarded the NASA Public Service Medal for outstanding leadership of the 2001 Mars Odyssey GRS team; in 2010, he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal for leading the TEGA investigation with the LPL-led Phoenix mission to Mars.

Dr. Timothy Swindle joined LPL in 1986 and became Department Head and Laboratory Director in 2012. His research interests include cosmochemistry, lunar studies, and small bodies. He uses measurements of the noble gases in extraterrestrial materials (lunar samples and meteorites) to study the evolution of the solar system. He serves as Director of the Arizona Space Grant Consortium. Tim was awarded the Antarctic Service Medal (2000) and is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society (2008).

Highlights of Tim's tenure as Head and Director include his efforts in the formation of UArizona science clusters for Space Situational Awareness and Earth Dynamics Observatory and in the creation of the Arizona Space Institute; his active support and advocacy for increased diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and awareness; development of the Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility; and development and expansion of The Art of Planetary Science.