Spring

Sharon Hooven joined LPL in August 2011 as a Business Manager, Senior, for the OSIRIS-REx mission. Prior to joining LPL, she worked for the University of Arizona Department of Pathology business office; and, prior to that, "well, a long time ago," according to Sharon, she was with the marketing department of a simulation computer company in Michigan. Sharon has one son (Lewis, his wife Rebbeca), one daughter (Monique, her husband Shawn), and three grandsons (Cameron-10, Danye-8, and Kristopher-6) who are her greatest joy. In her spare time, she enjoys the outdoors, with hiking being one of her favorite activities. Retirement is not far off and Sharon looks forward to purchasing a motor home, adopting a dog, and traveling the United States to cross items off her bucket list—the Northern lights, moonbow at Cumberland Falls in Kentucky, swimming with the manatees in Florida. The list goes on and on, according to Sharon: “I think I’ve passed the point where I could hike the Appalachian Trail but maybe in a whole bunch of pieces over a very long period of time.”

Emily Joseph is a member of the operations team for Cassini’s Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). Emily grew up in Tucson and began working in astronomy as a high school intern at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI). She has a B.S. in Astronomy from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduation, she returned to Tucson (and the warm weather!) and continued her work at PSI as a research assistant. Emily joined the VIMS team half-time in January 2015 and loves the opportunity to work with the mission that first got her interested in space. Her job involves creating instructions for the spacecraft based on mission scientists’ goals to allow Cassini to meet those goals safely and efficiently. In her spare time, she enjoys cycling, baking, and doing craft projects.

Professor Emerita Elizabeth (Pat) Roemer, passed away on April 8, 2016. Pat joined LPL in 1966, and retired in 1997. In 1972, Dr. Roemer chaired the committee tasked with organizing a department of planetary sciences for the University of Arizona. She specialized in comets and asteroids, starting at a time long before those were popular topics, and was a female professor in a male-dominated community long before that was commonplace. She was also a staunch friend and supporter of the LPL library for many years.

 

Professor Renu Malhotra has garnered two high honors this spring. In January, she received a Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professorship at the University of Arizona. This award, from the Tucson-based Marshall Foundation, is in recognition of her outstanding work in orbital dynamics. 

In April, Professor Malhotra was named a Regents’ Professor by the Arizona Board of Regents. The title of Regents’ Professor is the highest level of recognition bestowed on faculty in the Arizona state university system. It recognizes full professors whose work has garnered national and international distinction; no more than 3 percent of faculty can hold the title at any given time.

In 2015, Professor Malhotra was elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Academy of Sciences.

Mildred Matthews spent 26 years at LPL, beginning in 1970, working on the Space Science Series with Professor Tom Gehrels. The text below is from Rick Binzel, Professor of Planetary Sciences and Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

On February 11, just four days short of her 101st birthday, Mildred Shapley Matthews passed away peacefully at her home in California with her family present. Mildred was the daughter of Harvard College Observatory Director Harlow Shapley and she held the interesting distinction of being "lost in the solar system" for 75 years. As a commemoration of his newborn daughter, Shapley bestowed the name Mildred to asteroid 878 discovered in 1916. Unfortunately the initial observations of the asteroid were limited, and the object was "lost" with highly uncertain orbital elements until recovered in 1991. Friends and colleagues seeing Mildred over the years would always ask, "are you found yet?"

Matthews' foundational contributions to planetary science began around the time of her nominal retirement age, when in the 1970s she began working as the production editor in the inaugural years of the UA Press Space Science Series created by Tom Gehrels. Her role became most prominently recognized as co-editor on more than a dozen volumes extending in to the 1990s. Overall for more than 20 Space Science Series volumes she edited, operating through friendly (then increasingly stern, but always polite) post cards and phone calls to delinquent authors, it was Matthews who brought the books into their final published form.

Matthews leaves behind a legacy of books that have served as the gateway for countless planetary science careers and insights toward future advancements in our field.

Many LPL field trips could be retitled “Effects of the Farallon Plate Subduction,” and this spring’s trip to the San Bernardino Valley and Chiricahua Mountains was no exception. For three days (Feb. 26-28), LPL field trip group (PTYS 594A) explored an area shaped by the volcanic and tectonic consequences of plate subduction in addition to the consequences of changing water availability.

On day one, our group stopped at the spheroidally weathered rocks off the I-10 freeway (east toward New Mexico) before moving on to Willcox Playa, where we discussed how playas form and searched for signs of large desiccation cracks, drying due to climate change, and signs of earth fissures. Earth fissures in Arizona are caused by subsidence due to artificial groundwater pumping, a process so far constrained to the Earth. We also discussed the biological and human history of the area, noting that Geronimo, the Apache leader, surrendered on what is now private land not far from the field trip route.

Day two was focused more on the consequences of the Farallon Plate subduction, including the basin and range province formation and the multiple episodes of volcanism. We saw cinder cones and maar craters, and reviewed the formation of mantle xenoliths, discussing the consequences of the still-active basin and range formation in the Southwest (including an 1887 earthquake that had its epicenter in Mexico but was still felt in Tucson). Field trippers also took the opportunity to discuss border issues, which seemed especially pertinent as later that day, we saw a mounted border patrol officer making rounds.

Finally, on day three, we drove across the Chiricahua Mountains and arrived at the national monument. Our hikes brought us close to hoodoos as well as precariously balanced rocks (PBRs), resulting in discussion about their formation in tuff deposits from a large eruption about 30 million years ago, similarly timed to the formation of some of the cinder cones observed the day before. Due to construction within the national monument, there were features that we were unable to see, including fossil fumaroles, but our group discussed them and the economic role that the volcanic activity has played in Arizona’s history (Arizona has high grade copper deposits that are still being mined). 

	The Spring 2016 LPL field trip group photo at Chiricahua National Monument. (Photo credit: Hamish Hay)
	The field trip group listens to talks about the formation of the Turkey Creek volcanic deposit, hoodoos, and precariously balanced rocks within Chiricahua National Monument. (Photo credit: Margaret Landis)
	Shane Byrne explains to the group how plate subduction can lead to volcanic activity and basin and range terrain. (Photo credit: Margaret Landis)

Youngmin JeongAhn has been awarded the 2015 Theoretical Astrophysics Program (TAP) Research Prize. Youngmin won for his paper titled, "On the non-uniform distribution of the angular elements of near-Earth objects." After graduating from LPL in August 2015, Youngmin began a postdoctoral position studying asteroid dynamics with Professor Wing-Huen Ip at the National Central University of Taiwan. As of March 1, 2016, Youngmin is working with Mauricio Reyes-Ruiz at the Instituto de Astronomía, UNAM, Ensenada.