Kana Ishimaru

PTYS Graduate Student

Kana is a PhD student at the Department of Planetary Science, and currently working on asteroid Bennu's geomorphology for the OSIRIS-REx mission. She was born in Ehime, Japan, and moved around frequently with her family in and outside the country until she came back to Ehime for junior high school and high school. She received a bachelor's degree in Earth and Planetary Environmental Science at the University of Tokyo. She worked on laboratory experiments and her undergraduate thesis was on dehydration and recrystallization kinetics of serpentine. During her degree, she also had internships at JAXA to model carbon cycle on Earth-like planets, and at LPL to investigate Cr abundance in olivine grains in chondrites. Kana's interests are primarily in asteroid studies varying widely from sample analysis to image processing, as well as space exploration mission development.

Degree(s)

  • B.S. Earth and Planetary Environmental Science, 2019, The University of Tokyo
Publications

Lauretta, D. S., Connolly, H. C., … Ishimaru, K., … & the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team. (2024). Asteroid (101955) Bennu in the Laboratory: Properties of the Sample Collected by OSIRIS-REx. Accepted to Meteoritics & Planetary Science

Ishimaru, K., & Lauretta, D. S. (2024). Analysis of layered boulders on asteroid (101955) Bennu and their implications for fluid flow on the parent body. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 59(1), 193-210. https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.14115

Kaplan, H. H., Lauretta, D. S., ... Ishimaru, K., ... & Enos, H. L. (2020). Bright carbonate veins on asteroid (101955) Bennu: Implications for aqueous alteration history. Science, 370(6517), eabc3557. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc3557

Tasker, E. J., Ishimaru, K., Guttenberg, N., & Foriel, J. (2020). Earth-Like: an education & outreach tool for exploring the diversity of planets like our own. International Journal of Astrobiology, 19(3), 264-275. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1473550419000326