Spring

The OSIRIS-REx mission, selected as the third NASA New Frontiers mission in May 2011, launched its hub website. Visit http://osiris-rex.lpl.arizona.edu.

This site provides basic information about the mission and links to resources within NASA, to partners and to other sites of interest. This site is the hub for our web presence on various platforms and outlets. The mission is also on Twitter (@OSIRISRex) and Facebook (Osiris Rex). Mission presence will evolve over the 14-year mission so plan to continue to explore the website and social media.

Professor Timothy D. Swindle has been named the new Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Head of the Department of Planetary Sciences, replacing the late Michael J. Drake, who served in that role for 17 years.

Tim has been on the faculty at LPL since 1986, arriving shortly after receiving his Ph.D. in Physics from Washington University in St. Louis. While at LPL, he has won a Provost's General Education Teaching Award and a College of Science Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2008, he became the first Assistant Director of LPL, and served as Acting Department Head and Director in early 2010 and again in late 2011.

His research is on extraterrestrials materials like meteorites and lunar samples, and he has had a noble gas mass spectrometry laboratory on campus since 1990. He is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, and has served the Society as a member of the Council, the Treasurer, and a member (and later chair) of both the Awards Committee and Endowment Committee. As anyone who has gotten him started on Antarctic stories knows, he has served as a member of the Antarctic Search for Meteorites field party on the Polar Plateau four times, as many times as any volunteer in the program.

When not at work, he can often be found riding his bicycle around Tucson (usually avoiding getting hit by cars) or going to baseball games.

LPL Fieldtrip Spring 2012
by Assistant Professor Shane Byrne

Enthusiasm has been building for some time for us to return to Death Valley and this semester we made the long drive up there to see one of the most geologically diverse places in the world. It's rare that you can see classic examples of fluvial channel erosion, alluvial fans, dunefields, active tectonics, recent volcanism, dry lakes and salt flats all in one place. Death Valley is notoriously inhospitable today, but has been the site of lakes at many times in its past, most recently at the end of the last ice age.

On the drive to Death Valley, we stopped at the Kelso Dunes in the Mojave Desert to spend the first night. Despite the 500ft height and strong winds, we climbed up to the summit and were treated to an unusual sight. The winds had stripped off the upper dry sand in places, leaving deeper wet sand intact and revealing the internal cross-bedded stratigraphy within the dune. This is usually only seen in the frozen remnants of eroded sandstones.

We got our first view of Death Valley itself the next day from the east by stopping at Dante's View overlook. Recently, only one side of the valley has been sinking---so the alluvial fans on the west side have had little trouble spreading across the valley floor, whereas those on the east are smaller and episodically buried by lake sediments. We drove down Furnace Creek Wash towards the valley entrance and stopped to check out the diversion point. In 1941, highway workers (with bold confidence characteristic of the age) diverted this wash through the much smaller Gower's Gulch. The (unforeseen) consequences of the stream's readjustment in sediment carrying capacity have been a major headache for the Park Service, but a windfall for students of fluvial systems. The large amount of erosion that has taken place at the diversion point now threatens Route 190. At the other end of Gower's Gulch, a previously small alluvial fan is being rapidly extended with this fresh material forcing the Park Service to regularly bulldoze debris off Badwater Road.

Within Death Valley, we visited the Mesquite Flat Dunefield and saw mudflows that had emanated from nearby canyons. After spending the night at Stove Pipe Wells, we visited a nearby similar canyon (Mosaic Canyon), the inside of which is polished smooth by the regular action of debris-laden floodwater. After another long drive (Death Valley is a big park!), we stopped at Ubehebe Crater, which provides an example of what happens when magma flash-heats water underground. Steam pressure results in an explosion that forms the crater. Underground explosions, like the one that took place at Ubehebe, create craters very similar to impact craters and very different from regular volcanic calderas. Ubehebe crater is quite young, probably less than a thousand years old, and is still pristine in appearance (apart from the parking lot on the rim).

No visit to Death Valley would be complete without a trip to Racetrack Playa. At the end of a rather rugged road (we got three flat tires on this road---not unusual) lies an almost perfectly flat dry lake with boulders littering the southern margin. These boulders are what make the place so unusual, as they move along the playa, gouging tracks as they go. No one has ever seen a boulder move (unfortunately our trip was no exception), yet the tracks are clearly visible. What a great mystery! The current best theory involves ice rafts forming around the boulders in the winter, providing a sail that the wind can blow across the surface (embedded boulder included).

All good things must come to an end and the next day it was time to leave Death Valley and start home. On the way out of the valley we stopped to inspect the famous salt flats and the weird and wonderful polygonal features they contain. The action of salt is everywhere here and helps break down boulders into smaller pebbles, which can be seen at several sites along Badwater Road. At the southern exit of the Valley we paused to look at Shoreline Butte and the many strandlines etched on its flanks from Death Valley's former lakes. We spent our last night in the Mojave again beside a recent lava flow in the Cima Volcanic Field. Lava flows, both young and old, surrounded us, and the difference between them could be examined. Great examples of desert pavement (where a tightknit carpet of pebbles floats upwards on top of accumulating dust) exist here on the older flows.

Death Valley never fails to impress with its diversity of geologic processes and the often obscure interactions between them. Parts of planetary surfaces are fabulously complex and rich historical treasure troves. Death Valley is one of these special places, detailing changes in Earth's interior and climate through the rise and fall of mountains and the coming and going of lakes.

This past January, OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta announced the formal appointment of Ed Beshore as the OSIRIS-REx Deputy PI. Ed transitioned to this role from his previous position as Principal Investigator, operations manager, and lead software engineer for the Near Earth Object (NEO) survey programs of the Catalina Sky Survey, Siding Spring Survey, and Mt. Lemmon Surveys. Steve Larson has assumed the PI role with Catalina Sky Survey.

The Gehrels family has honored Professor Tom Gehrels with a campus garden bench in his name. The bench is located between the Kuiper Space Sciences building and the Flandrau Planetarium, and bears a plaque that commemorates his work on campus: "Honoring Tom Gehrels, UA Professor 1961-2011."

Information about the "Benches for the Campus Arboretum" program is available here.

Congratulations to Kari Figueroa, recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Staff Award, and kudos to Audrie Fennema, Senior Staff Technician with HiRISE, who was awarded honorable mention for the Outstanding Staff Award.

Kari Figueroa is an Associate Accountant in the LPL Business Office, providing support for all aspects of the purchasing process from processing forms, following and interpreting policies and assisting LPL employees with purchasing process. Kari has recently taken on subcontract processing, which includes communicating with subcontractors, setting up new subcontract purchase orders and processing invoice payments. She has handled this new process and the changes in policies and procedures with professionalism. Kari has handled the transition to the new UAccess Financial system by learning all of the new processes, creating required forms and procedures, and training other LPL staff. Kari goes above and beyond to provide excellent service and is a very valuable asset to the Business Office and to LPL.

Audrie Fennema has been a Senior Staff Technician with HiRISE since 2005. She is primarily responsible for the health and safety monitoring of HiRISE. She assists in managing processing pipelines and has made significant contributions to, or developed outright, several processing pipelines that are producing the great science products being released by the project. She also manages the "Emergency Contact of the Week" schedule, meaning that she is on twenty-four hour call and has in her possession a special "Red Phone" that enables JPL to be in contact with her at all times. If an emergency comes up, she will come in at all hours of the day or night, weekdays or weekends, and provide problem investigation and reporting and observational problem resolution. Audrie is backup for HiRISE Targeting Specialists (uplink) and is responsible for HiWIKI updates and backups; she also provides Special Imaging support.

Audrie often volunteers to give presentations and give tours for HiRISE education and public outreach. She volunteered to be backup Building Monitor for the Sonett Building and attends the training sessions for the University of Arizona Emergency Building Coordinators. Her co-workers consider her to be a versatile staff member who performs exceptionally well in every aspect of her job.

Kari and Audrie were recognized for their achievements at the LPL Awards and Recognition Reception held on April 13, 2012.

Great job Kari and Audrie!

Congratulations to FY 2011 Arizona Space Grant Consortium Intern Michael Schaffner, who was chosen to display his Space Grant research at the April 24, 2012, Posters on the Hill event at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. The title of Michael's poster is "Water on the Moon: Remote Sensing from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter." Michael is a senior in Systems Engineering at the University of Arizona. His mentor on this project was Professor William Boynton.

More information about Michael and his project with Bill Boynton is available on UANews.

Our colleague and friend Selina Johnson passed away in December. Selina was a member of LPL's administrative staff for many years. She started at LPL as an undergraduate student in 1981, and left as a Senior Program Coordinator in 2008. Selina was lively and vivacious and we remember her big smile and hearty laugh. There was never a dull moment when Selina was in the crowd. She'll be greatly missed by all. A memorial celebration took place on February 18, 2012, at Tohono Chul Park in Tucson.

Elizabeth "Selina" Johnson died peacefully in her sleep, unexpectedly on Thursday, December 15, 2011. Selina was a loving wife and mother, survived by her husband, Glenn Johnson; her two sons, Byron and Neil; her mother, Libbie Dearing; her siblings, Michael Dearing (Debi), Robert Dearing (Vanessa), James Dearing, Mark Dearing and Stephen Dearing (Colleen); her nieces and nephews, Laura, Autumn, Ashlyn and Joshua. Selina was born July 23, 1952 in Los Angeles, CA to Libbie and Paul Dearing. She was raised in Wisconsin and Illinois. She graduated from Larkin High School in Elgin, Illinois in 1970. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Speech and Hearing Sciences from University of Arizona and a Masters degree in Elementary Education from Northern Arizona University. She moved to Tucson in 1972, where she met her husband of 34 years. She worked at The University of Arizona for 27 years, specializing in K-12 educational outreach. Selina was a pillar of strength in her family. We are broken hearted and will miss her smile, playful laugh and love. 

The Department of Planetary Sciences/Lunar and Planetary Laboratory was pleased to honor the following students as recipients of the 2017 College of Science Graduate Student Awards. Each student received $100 and recognition at a reception held on April 26.

Outstanding Scholarship: Tad Komacek

Tad Komacek, the 2017 LPL Kuiper Award recipient, was also named as Outstanding Scholar for the College of Science graduate student awards. Tad is a fourth-year student working with Professor Adam Showman. His research interests include magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), the atmospheric dynamics of hot Jupiters, the interior evolution of giant planets, and long-term surface-atmosphere climate feedbacks that control the climate and oceans of terrestrial planets; Tad has published 4 peer-reviewed papers on these topics. His scholarship has previously been recognized with the Carson Fellowship, 2 Galileo Circle Scholarships, and a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship. Tad plans to graduate in 2018.

Outstanding Service and Outreach: Margaret Landis

Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring: Chet Maleszewski

Chet Maleszewski earned the LPL Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) Award for Spring 2016 and is the 2017 department recipient of the College of Science Teaching and Mentoring award. Chet earned the LPL GTA award for his work as a GTA with Assistant Professor Vishnu Reddy in the PTYS/ASTR 170B2 class, which is a General Education Natural Sciences Tier I  course. Chet's previous experience as a General Education GTA was especially useful not only to the students in the class, but to Dr. Reddy, for whom this was his first large-classroom teaching experience and first general education class. Chet was nominated for his efforts in involving the undergraduate students with the course material and helping them to succeed. For example, Chet organized and proctored several class review sessions and hosted extended office hours; he worked closely with students who were enrolled with the Disabilities Resource Center. He also posted study guides for each lecture and posted them to the course D2L site. 

Professor Rick Greenberg was recently contacted by a high school student regarding an excerpt from the 2009 AP English Language and Composition Exam. It turns out that a piece on planetary protection (Greenberg, Richard, and B. Randall Tufts. "Infecting Other Worlds" American Scientist Jul.-Aug. 2001. 24 Feb. 2008) was used as as a question on the test (see Source F here).

The student emailed Rick to ask whether this piece was "serious or satirical." Rick concludes that, "she couldn't tell which, so I guess that says something about the piece or about the subject!"