The LPL Board of Advisors, the external group chartered with helping LPL and its director improve interactions with the world beyond campus and NASA, has been reformulated after a several year absence. The group will have its initial meeting in June to set goals and begin work. The Board
2013 Spring Department News
On Monday, March 25th, I had the honor to give two briefings on the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission to policy makers in Washington DC. OSIRIS-REx will visit asteroid 1999 RQ36, a carbon‐ and water‐rich object that is also one of the most potentially hazardous near‐Earth asteroids. This visit was
Kathryn M. Volk defended her dissertation titled "Dynamical Studies of the Kuiper Belt and the Centaurs" on April 1. Kat is a 2013 recipient of the Gerard P. Kuiper Memorial Award, presented each year to students of the Planetary Sciences who best exemplify, through the high quality of their research
On May 1, NASA announced that the OSIRIS-REx target asteroid 1999 RQ36 was renamed Bennu. The name Bennu was selected from over 8,000 entries submitted to the Name that Asteroid! contest. Bennu was an important avian deity in ancient Egypt and one of the symbols of the god Osiris
Despite our tendency to crisscross the whole southwestern U.S. on these trips, there is an incredibly interesting geologic story sitting on our doorstep here in the Tucson area. There has been growing interest among the fieldtrip group in understanding more about the processes that have fashioned the local landscape around
The first LPL Women's lunch had an impressive turnout of 36 women, representing alumnae, faculty, staff, and grad students, and many people who are combinations thereof. We came from the Kuiper, Sonett, and Drake buildings as well as JHUAPL, BYU, and Caltech (thanks to the Titan Working Group Meeting for bringing
The UA Campus played host again this spring to the annual Tucson Festival of Books. This year's event, the fifth annual festival, was held March 9-10, 2013; the event was a huge success despite some wild spring weather at the start.
LPL faculty, staff, and graduate students participated in
LPL often gets mentioned alongside our well known colleagues across Cherry Street in Steward Observatory. It’s not so often that we are mentioned alongside our other well known colleagues across University Boulevard who play in McKale Center, but we did manage to rate a mention in Sports Illustrated this year. Check it out!
Sarah Mattson, Senior Staff Technician with the HiRISE project, received an Emily Krauz scholarship from the University of Arizona Staff Advisory Council for the fall 2012 semester. The scholarship award is intended to support UA classified staff in career advancement or continuing education and professional development. Sarah applied the award to enrollment
In celebration of Women's History Month 2013 (Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), the OSIRIS-REx team developed some online resources for promoting celebrating women in STEM careers. Several current and former LPL faculty, staff, and students are featured, including Nadine Barlow