Spacewatch is enjoying the return to full-time regular operations, which resumed on December 7 after recovery from the Contreras Wildfire in June. Kitt Peak had previously been closed from March 2020 through October 2020 due to COVID, allowing only remote observing and daytime visits until June 2021.

Lightning caused the fire on June 11 in the Baboquivari Mountain range. Kitt Peak was evacuated on June 14 when high winds and dry conditions greatly accelerated the approach of the fire toward the observatory. Heroic efforts from the firefighter and flight crews and incident management teams preserved all of the science facilities. Only four structures were lost: two outbuildings, a residence, and the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) dorm. This is remarkable considering the fire swept over the southwest ridge that includes the ARO, Very Long Baseline Array antenna, and MDM. The official incident burn size was 29,482 acres.

The fire was deemed contained on June 24 and Bureau of Indian Affairs Type 4 Incident Management Team and National Burned Area Emergency Response Team took over. The Arizona Department of Transportation and the Tohono O’odham Utility Authority began work on the road and electrical infrastructures. Helicopters were required to fly in new electrical poles sited away from the road.

Spacewatch staff were allowed to begin clean-up operations in August, while on alert for emergency evacuation in case of a monsoon. After Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) installed temporary extra generators and a Starlink dish, Spacewatch was able to restart operations on September 6, although operations were hampered by the unreliability of generators — dome shutters are not opened unless there is some form of backup power. Line power was restored to the summit on October 7. With extremely limited bandwidth for the summit, Spacewatch was restricted to onsite observing and experienced frequent blips in connectivity. The internet fiber connection was restored on December 8, bringing Spacewatch back to full strength. However, the road is still closed to traffic, with only staff or experienced tenant drivers permitted to navigate the road without an escort vehicle.

In the early hours of Nov. 19, the skies over southern Ontario, Canada, lit up as a tiny asteroid harmlessly streaked across the sky high in Earth’s atmosphere, broke up, and likely scattered small meteorites over the southern coastline of Lake Ontario. Roughly 1 meter (3 feet) wide, the asteroid was detected 3.5 hours before impact, making this event the sixth time in history a small asteroid has been tracked in space before impacting Earth’s atmosphere.

Asteroid 2022 WJ1 was discovered by LPL's Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) on the evening of Nov. 18 during routine search operations for near-Earth objects. CSS observations were quickly reported to the Minor Planet Center and the data were then automatically posted to the Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page.

NASA’s Scout impact hazard assessment system automatically fetched the new data from that page and began calculating the object’s possible trajectory and chances of impact. Seven minutes after the asteroid was posted on the confirmation page, Scout had determined it had a 25% probability of hitting Earth’s atmosphere, with possible impact locations stretching from the Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast of North America to Mexico. More observations were then provided by the astronomical community to better refine the asteroid’s trajectory and possible impact site.

As CSS continued to track the asteroid over the next few hours, Scout used this new data to update the asteroid’s trajectory and the system’s assessment of the chance of impact, posting those results on the hazard-assessment system’s webpage.

2022 WJ1 is the fourth pre-impact asteroid discovered so far by CSS and attests to the ability of the survey to rapidly find and enable the orbit characterization of potentially hazardous objects.

Brooke Carruthers (Molecular and Cellular Biology major, Astrobiology minor) was been selected as a Universities Space Research Association (USRA) Distinguished Undergraduate for 2022 based on the strength of her academic accomplishments and leadership qualities. She was one of 5 recipients chosen from 85 applicants. Brooke was selected to receive the James B. Willett Education Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes the efforts of the late James B. Willett, a noted astrophysicist who worked with USRA through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Headquarters. 

The USRA awards are granted to students who tackle challenging problems in aerospace engineering, space science research and exploration, demonstrate leadership, promote diversity in science and engineering, and are poised to make significant contributions to their fields. Faculty from USRA’s member universities reviewed the applications and made their recommendations for selection to the USRA President and CEO, Dr. Jeffery Isaacson.

The research award consists of a certificate, an award letter, and a scholarship in the amount of $5,000. Regents Professor Renu Malhotra, current chair of USRA Council of Institutions, presented the award to Brooke on behalf of USRA and UArizona. Read more about Brooke in the Spring 2022 LPL Newsletter.

LPL welcomed 13 new graduate students in Fall 2022.

LPL Postdoctoral Research Associate Dr. Sarah Moran has been named a University of Arizona Sursum Fellow, selected for her proposal on Haze Evolution in sub-Neptune Exoplanets through UV Laboratory Experiments. The award is a postdoctoral research development grant designed to foster independence and help advance the career goals of postdoctoral scholars by funding small research projects or training experiences that are outside the scope of their current postdoctoral appointments. Sarah's research interests include exoplanets, planetary formation and evolution, and planetary atmospheres.

Kristin Block and Bertha Orosco were recipients of this year's LPL Staff Excellence Award. 

Kristin Block was awarded in the Science and Engineering category for her skills and expertise in systems engineering and project management, as well as contributions to productivity and communications initiatives, which are indispensable to the success of HiRISE. As Principal Science Operations Engineer for HiRISE, Kristin leads development of non-standard special HiRISE imaging and engineering sequences. She was recognized for a long career of outstanding contributions (she has been personally responsible for over 10,000 images of Mars!) and leadership, but this year’s nominations cite two particular efforts that are in addition to her regular duties as a targeting specialist.

During the COVID pandemic, Kristin led a group that implemented a new way of testing HiRISE camera settings that bypasses the original process, which required a long review and approval period. With this new process, HiRISE can test camera settings more than ten times faster without getting special instructions or approval, and the team has discovered combinations that will extend HiRISE lifespan by years. In addition to this extraordinary work, Kristin led a team to organize and acquire HiRISE most famous image of 2021—the landing of the Perseverance Rover on Mars. Capturing that moment was incredibly technically difficult and also complicated by the threat of potential communications failures. Thanks to Kristin’s coordination and leadership, mistakes were avoided and the descent was capture by the HiRISE camera. These descent images not only capture the public imagination but provide crucial data that makes it possible to reconstruct the craft's landing sequence and diagnose problems. 

Administrative Associate Bertha Orosco won the LPL Staff Excellence Award in the Administrative Category. Bertha, or Bert as she is known to the department, has been with LPL since 2010 and previously won this award in 2014. In addition to the more traditional administrative work like travel and procurement, Bert’s responsibilities include a wide-ranging variety of tasks, including keeping key elements of the LPL web site updated. Keeping up with all the transitions and updates at LPL is a challenge that Bert navigates exceptionally well. Bert’s achievements on the job are reflected in the increased variety and technical nature of her responsibilities and her willingness to expand her abilities, meet new challenges, and incorporate new tools to better serve the department and all those who contact her throughout any given busy day.

Bert’s work on behalf of LPL during the COVID pandemic is an example of her contributions toward both service and efficiency. Throughout the COVID shutdown, Bert volunteered for in-person duties so the department could function and move ahead with the safety of all in mind. When in-person classes resumed, Bert was in the office and the classrooms to ensure instructors and students had what they needed to accommodate sometimes complicated hybrid classroom and teaching models. She spent many hours over the summer of 2021 in Kuiper classrooms testing a variety of Zoom and audiovisual combinations and documenting procedures. Bert is regularly confronted with special requests and problems. She rises to each challenge with creativity, technical ability, and good humor. She is regularly in the office after 5:00p.m. to ensure that all reservations are approved, announcements are posted, and special events are accommodated, and she is always gracious when her lunch break is interrupted with a request for supplies or technical assistance in a classroom. Given all that she accomplishes in a day, Bert’s most important contribution is perhaps the community she helps to create and maintain even during the most challenging of times.

Also recognized at this year's LPL Awards and Recognition Reception was Administrative Assistant Savannah Salazar-White. Savannah began working with LPL in 2015 as a student. In 2018, she was hired as an Administrative Assistant and began expanding her responsibilities; her supervisor came to rely upon her to assist with training new staff. Savannah's reliability, efficiency, and problem-solving was extremely valuable during the COVID shutdown and her colleagues are thankful for her dedication throughout that period and her continued excellent administrative support.

Rising senior Brooke Caruthers is majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology with minors in Marine Science and French in addition to Astrobiology. Brooke plans to earn a Ph.D. and pursue astrobiology research related to microbiology either at NASA or another academic institution. Brooke is passionate about the amazing chemical complexity that is biology, but wanted to learn more about how biology interacts with, and is affected by, other processes in order to understand the potential for life elsewhere. She found that the astrobiology minor was the perfect way to take courses on material outside the norm for her major and to interact with other students and professors from various departments. "Plus," Brooke says, "astrobiology allows me to pursue the most fun questions of all, where did we come from and are we alone?" The astrochemistry course taught by Regents Professor Lucy Ziurys has been Brooke's favorite class because she learned about molecular spectroscopy and the formation of stars and because she was able to visit the 20m radio telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.

Brooke has been working with the Kacar Lab, which recently moved from the UArizona to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in reconstructing ancient proteins to study the evolution of life on a molecular scale. Brooke will soon begin her senior thesis on a climate science GIS mapping project with LPL Professor Amy Mainzer. 

Morgan Cryder is a rising senior majoring in Geosciences with a minor in Math as well as Planetary Sciences. Morgan chose Planetary Sciences because she is just as curious about the other planets in our solar system as she is about the Earth. Morgan says, "I find it really interesting that I can apply what I learned in my geoscience studies or classes to other bodies in our solar system." Morgan has enjoyed all of her PTYS courses but says that the Mars course taught by Regents Professor Alfred McEwen was most memorable. The class was able to request HiRISE images and at the end of the course and each student presented on different Mars topics. Morgan felt that through this course she was able to really understand more about the red planet.

Morgan is currently researching Martian wrinkles with Associate Professor Jeff Andrew-Hanna. They have been analyzing the variability of these ridges and creating different codes to get better data on the characteristics of these ridges. In March, she presented this research at the 53rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Morgan is still undecided on the direction she wants to take her education and career. This summer she is participating in a petroleum camp and is looking forward to applying those new skills to her research. She hopes that she can incorporate both earth science and space science into her future career.

The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission team was selected to receive the 2022 John L. "Jack" Swigert Jr. Award for Space Exploration by the Space Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for space exploration and space-inspired industries. The award was presented on April 4 during the opening ceremony of the 37th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. The award recognizes extraordinary accomplishments in the realm of space exploration and discovery and honors the memory of astronaut John L. "Jack" Swigert Jr., one of the inspirations for the creation of the Space Foundation.

"I am enormously grateful to the Space Foundation for this honor," said LPL Regents Professor Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission. "The OSIRIS-REx team represents the pinnacle of human achievement. Team members have diverse backgrounds, skillsets and expertise. Together, we overcame numerous challenges to successfully collect a massive sample from asteroid Bennu. The best times are ahead of us, and the team is busy preparing for the analysis of these scientific treasures from outer space."

by Shane Byrne 

This semester (Spring 2022), the LPL field trip (PTYS 590) headed off to the Mojave Desert in California armed with various remote sensing datasets. There is a wide variety of test data in the Mojave from Synthetic Aperture Radars to visible wavelength cameras and there is an even wider range of geologic features to examine, from sand dunes to lava flows. We often spend a lot of time looking at data from places we’ll never see in person, so this was a chance for us to do both!

The next destination was a volcanic crater known as Kilbourne Hole, where the LPLers saw a textbook example of stratigraphy On the first evening, we stopped at the giant Kelso sand dunes and tried to figure out how to explain their radar appearance in different bands. A sunset hike to the top allowed us to take in a gorgeous moonrise from the summit. We experienced the Kelso dunes’ rare ability to boom. Booming dunes make low rumbling sounds during sand avalanches thanks to their very specifically shaped and sized sand grains.

The desert southwest has a lot of playas and the Mojave is no exception. We visited two of these dry lake beds with very different radar signatures. Soda Lake (a bone-jarring hour-long drive down dirt roads) is still connected to the subterranean Mojave River and is wet just below the surface, whereas Broadwell Playa is hydrologically isolated and dry.

The Mojave has plenty of volcanos and we were able to visit cinder cones and lava flows at Cima, Pisgah, and Amboy. The different flows at these sites have very different radar behavior that is a proxy for their age. We camped beside the most recent (~11 thousand years old). Although a bit hard to scramble into, caves at Cima and Pisgah added an astrobiological dimension to the trip. Data from airborne spectrometers help us figure out the weathering state of the cinder cones and composition of other geologic units.

Our last night was spent near the town of Amboy on Route 66 (a ghost town that refuses to die). Roy’s motel will always be beloved by the group and the high winds we had that night certainly made the last campsite memorable. The Mojave is always a favorite as it teaches all kinds of things about remote sensing, geology, and four-wheel-drive controls.

You can support LPL field trips with a gift to the Wilkening-Sill Field Trip Fund: https://give.uafoundation.org/science-lpl

Gathering at top of a cinder cone in the Cima Volcanic Field.

Aerial view of the campsite at the edge of a young lava flow. Photo courtesy of student Nathan Hadland and his drone.