LPL Shines in Planetary Science Research
UA planetary research articles were quoted more than 10,000 times over the last 10 years, according to ScienceWatch.com, a comprehensive, open Web resource for science metrics.
The analysis was conducted using a Thomson Reuters Corporation database, which includes citations from articles produced by researchers in various countries around the world.
During the survey period, which spanned Jan. 1, 2001 to March 18, 2011, the UA had 579 publications in planetary sciences. Only NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, are cited more often than UA in planetary exploration scientific publications.
Placing third behind NASA and JPL means UA closely follows what are the world's largest players in spacecraft design, construction, launch and science operations, according to the Thomson Reuters website.
"The prominence of the UA in the planetary sciences is a tribute to the extraordinary talents of the faculty, support staff and student body in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory," said Michael Drake, head of the UA's department of planetary sciences and director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, or LPL.
"These dry statistics mask an even more fundamental point. Only NASA as a whole, an organization with a budget of about $18 billion, and JPL with a budget of about $1.5 billion, outperform the UA," Drake said.
"When one realizes that the budget of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is only $2.6 million from the state of Arizona, these comparisons become even more stark," Drake added.
Currently, the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is actively involved in five spacecraft missions: Cassini; the Phoenix Mars Lander; the HiRISE camera orbiting Mars; LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter); the MESSENGER mission to Mercury; the upcoming HiSCI camera on the Mars Trace Gas Orbiter; and OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. sample return mission to an asteroid, which was just selected by NASA.
Read the full UANews release.
