On Thursday, September 20, LPLers were treated to an extraordinary site: the Space Shuttle Endeavour, piggy-backed on a 747 aircraft, soaring over the Kuiper building and the UA mall as it made its way from Houston to a permament retirement home at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Spectators across Tucson, and especially those atop and in front of the Kuiper Building, were thrilled to see Endeavour at 1,500 feet above ground level.

Endeavour flew over Tucson at the request of her last commander, astronaut Mark Kelly, in honor of Kelly's wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Kelly and Giffords watched the fly-over from the UA mall.

Credit: Cecilia Leung.

Credit: Benjie Sanders/Arizona Daily Star.

Credit: Maria Schuchardt.

Credit: AP Photo/Southwest Photo Bank, P.K. Weis.

Credit: James Keane.

NASA’s largest competed planetary science missions are those in the New Frontiers class. Those familiar with LPL know that the New Frontiers mission OSIRIS-REx, which will return a sample from the near-Earth object Bennu, is being operated out of LPL, with Professor Dante Lauretta as the Principal Investigator. But it seems that every New Frontiers mission has strong LPL ties, so when NASA announced the two finalists for the next New Frontiers mission, it was no surprise that both missions had LPLers in critical roles.

One of the two is CAESAR, a sample return mission to Comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the target for ESA’s recent Rosetta mission. Dante Lauretta is the Mission Sample Scientist for CAESAR, and Associate Professor Tom Zega is also a Co-Investigator.

The other is Dragonfly, a mission to explore Saturn’s moon Titan with a quadcopter. There, the PI is LPL alumna Elizabeth Turtle, the Deputy PI is alum Jason Barnes, and Co-Is include alums Sarah Hörst, Jeff Johnson, Erich Karkoschka (currently a Staff Scientist at LPL), Juan Lora, Catherine Neish, and Jani Radebaugh, as well as former LPL postdocs Ralph Lorenz and Aileen Yingst.

The mission that is ultimately selected (probably in 2019) will be the fourth New Frontiers mission, and will keep LPL’s record of significant involvement in such missions intact.

The first New Frontiers mission was New Horizons, which visited Pluto and is now en route to a New Year’s Day encounter with Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69. That mission’s Co-Is include LPL grads Marc Buie, Dale Cruikshank, Will Grundy and John Spencer, as well as former LPL postdocs Mihaly Horanyi and Bill McKinnon. Grundy is the Composition Theme Team Lead, and Spencer and McKinnon are Deputy Team Leads.

The second was Juno, the mission currently in orbit around Jupiter. Professor Emeritus Bill Hubbard played a key role in its development, and remains a Co-I. Other Co-Is include former LPL professor Jonathan Lunine, former LPL postdoc Tristan Guillot, and, until his death, LPL alum Toby Owen.

LPL is pleased to announce a new graduate student award named for a former department scientist. The LPL Leif Andersson Award for Service and Outreach will be awarded annually to a PTYS graduate student in recognition for attention to broader impacts and involvement in activities outside of academic responsibilities that benefit the department, university, and the larger community.

Leif Andersson went from being a national television quiz show star in Sweden to an LPL researcher. At LPL, he worked on mapping craters on the Far Side of the Moon based on Lunar Orbiter images from the 1960s. He died from cancer in 1979, at age 35. His family established the Leif Andersson Award for Graduate Student Service and Outreach in 2018.

Leif (prounced “Lafe”, with a long “a”) was born in Stenastorp, Sweden, and became a leader of a group of schoolchildren interested in science, forming a science fiction club and participating with his friends in launching homemade rockets in the late 1950s. He acquired fame in Sweden on a game show whose name translates as “Double or Nothing—The 10,000 Kronor Question” (based on the “The $64,000 Question” in America). In the show, a contestant was quizzed on a particular subject. When a contestant won the 10,000 kronor prize based on knowledge of astronomy, Leif, then 16, was encouraged to challenge that contestant, and Leif won. He went on to get a degree from Lund University in Sweden, before moving to the United States to earn a Ph.D. at Indiana University. He completed his Ph.D., based on observations of Pluto, in 1974, then moved to LPL. A lunar crater (appropriately, on the Far Side) is named Andersson in his honor, and there is an asteroid named 9223 Leifandersson. Given his connection with the popularization of science through television and science fiction, it is appropriate to name an award for service and public outreach in his honor.

Read more about the 2018 Andersson award recipient, Maria Steinrück, in the Graduate News chapter of this newsletter (https://www.lpl.arizona.edu/news/2018/spring/11th-annual-college-science-graduate-student-awards).

PTYS undergraduate minor Adriana Mitchell has won a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, which awards students who show exceptional promise of becoming leaders in their STEM field. The scholarship includes a $7,500 stipend which Adriana will use for summer 2018 travel to Japan to work with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency in creating mission-vital image data products for the Hayabusa2 asteroid sample return mission. Working with Dr. Lucille Le Corre (Planetary Science Institute), Adriana will create tools for projecting 2D images of asteroid Ryugu on to 3D shape model. Adriana was previously a NASA Space Grant intern working with Vishnu Reddy on special characterization of asteroids. In August 2017, she tracked the solar eclipse as part of the Citizen CATE project. This year, Adriana will receive funds from the LPL Curson Travel endowment, which she will apply toward her summer research travel. Adriana will begin her senior year as a University of Arizona Optical Sciences major in the fall.

The Kuiper Space Sciences Building is getting a fresh look this spring. We're getting new paint on the walls and door frames, and new ceiling tiles. While the Kuiper residents and the crew working around each other was sometimes troublesome for both groups, the results are a huge improvement. Thanks to the UA Facilities Management paint crew for brightening up our spaces! From left to right: Nidia, Adam, Barbara, Charlie, James, Bobby; and Manny, not pictured here.

Postdoctoral Research Associate Alexandre Emsenhuber began working at LPL with Professor Erik Asphaug in February 2018. Alexandre's research focuses on collision processes and linking them with orbital dynamics. Collisions between similar-size bodies often leave multiple remnants. By tracking the remnants, Alexandre aims to determine realistic return scenario, when the remnants further collide or are ejected from the system. Alexandre also has an interest in modeling of giant planet formation by using an approach that combines accretion of solids, gas, orbital migration and dynamical interactions. With this method, he can assess the interactions between the different processes involved in the formation of those planets.

Alexandre grew up in Neuchâtel (Switzerland) where he obtained a B.S. in Physics in (2011). He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Bern with Professor Willy Benz (2017). Alexandre's doctoral research was on impact processes occurring during the formation of planetary systems. He analysed collisions between protoplanets found in theoretical models of planetary formation and modeled specific events that could lead to planetary-scale features, such as the Martian borealis basin. In his free time, Alexandre likes to bike, hike, ski and cook.

Dave Horvath joined LPL in September 2017 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Associate Professor Jeff Andrews-Hanna. His current research focuses on mapping and characterizing what is potentially the youngest volcanic eruption on Mars, a putative pyroclastic deposit in the Elysium Planitia region. He is also interested in the hydrology and ancient climate of Mars. His future work will focus on using hydrologic models and observations from the Mars Science Laboratory on the Curiosity rover to further constrain the evolution of the climate and hydrology of Gale crater and, by extension, Mars.

Dave was raised in Austin, Texas, and did his undergraduate down the road in San Antonio, earning a B.S. in Physics and a B.A. in Mathematics (2011) from St. Mary’s University. From there, Dave moved to Golden, Colorado, to study at the Colorado School of Mines, where he received his Ph.D. in Geophysics (2017). His thesis research was focused on characterizing the methane-based hydrological cycle of Titan and investigating the hydrology of Gale crater during the later stages of hydrologic activity. In his free time, Dave enjoys traveling and hiking, climbing—he's summited 14 of the 53 fourteen-thousand foot peaks in Colorado during his stint in Golden—but as an avid board gamer, he also enjoys a relaxed night of sitting around the game table with friends.

by Shane Byrne

This semester we returned to Death Valley after a gap of five years (not coincidently, the graduate student turnover timescale!).

Recent flood damage within the park provided the impetus needed to mix up some of the sites we stopped and camped at. Dante’s View is a great place to see the valley (from the east), but then again, so is Aguereberry Point (from the west). It was at this latter location that we really kicked off our tour of the valley and the closely-packed geological wonders it contains.

A favorite of hydrology students everywhere is the diversion of the enormous Furnace Creek wash through the relatively tiny Gower Gulch. This 1941 engineering adventure led to huge amounts of erosion as the drainage system struggled to return to something approaching equilibrium. All that eroded material goes somewhere—unfortunately it’s dumped on the main park highway, which the park service now bulldozes clear regularly. There’s been clearly visible erosion even since we visited in 2012. Only a small plug of bedrock now separates the main Furnace Creek wash and Gower’s Gulch. Once that goes, the erosion rate will rapidly spike as the Furnace Creek sediment empties en masse through Gower’s Gulch. Sadly, route 190 sits on top of this sediment and so its continued existence hangs by a geological thread. Although an impending logistical disaster for the park, the readjustment of the hydrological system is fascinating for us to watch.

There are few places in the world where so much diverse geology is crammed into such a small area. Dune fields, mud flows, breccia conglomerates, steam explosion craters, old lake shorelines, salt polygons and salt weathered boulders were all on our itinerary are just a sample of what is available. Some things like the sliding rocks of Racetrack Playa can be seen in very few locations and that was well worth the bone-jarring hours of driving it took to get there.

Trips like these are always bonding experiences for us especially when we get to set tents up in 50 mph winds in a dust storm as happened one night. However, several broken tents later we had the ample compensation of a hot meal and good company at the Badwater Saloon!

LPL extends best wishes to Joe Gotobed, retiring in June after many years of service to the department. Joe began his career at LPL in 1980 as a Programmer III. He has held a variety of titles through the years, retiring as Information Technology Manager, Principal. For nearly 40 years, Joe has been the "go-to" guy for computing at LPL. In the early 1980s, Joe designed and helped build the Kuiper datacenter and network from the ground up. He managed LPL computing's infrastructure through three decades of growth and technological evolution, from the days of punched cards to today's cloud computing. From Pioneer to OSIRIS-REx, Joe's contributions to networking and computing have been an integral part of LPL's success in solar system exploration. 

The recipient of this year's University of Arizona Billy Joe Varney Award for Excellence is Heather Enos, Deputy Principal Investigator for OSIRIS-REx. This award recognizes Heather's service to UA employees, attention to diversity, and community outreach efforts. Congratulations, Heather!