LPL Spotlight Stories

Ceres is a dwarf planet that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. In this image, Ahuna Mons can be seen in the bottom right of Ceres's profile.

Ceres Takes Life an Ice Volcano at a Time

By Emily Walla, NASA Intern/University Communications - September 14, 2018 Every year throughout its 4.5-billion-year life, ice volcanoes on the...
For this animation, OSIRIS-REx image scientists combined five exposures of asteroid Bennu taken by the spacecraft’s PolyCam camera. At this distance, almost six times of that between the Earth and the moon, Bennu is just a point source, indistinguishable from a star other than the way it moves against the star field in the background. This will change dramatically once the spacecraft comes closer and rendezvous with the asteroid in December. (Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)

OSIRIS-REx Captures First Glimpse of Asteroid Bennu

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications, and Erin Morton, OSIRIS-REx - August 24, 2018 After an almost two-year journey through space,...
"I hope there is a massive coronal mass ejection that happens during the mission," says Joe Giacalone (left), "…or maybe at the end of the mission." Kristopher Klein (right) is excited about the opportunity to go to a "fundamentally new" region of space – a star.

LPL Scientists Gear Up to 'Touch the Sun'

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications - August 8, 2018 Look at any image of the Earth taken from space and...
Planet-Forming Disks May Resemble Solar System 5 Billion Years Ago

Planet-Forming Disks May Resemble Solar System 5 Billion Years Ago

By Emily Litvack, UA Research, Discovery and Innovation - June 14, 2018 To make a planet, you need stuff. Protoplanetary...
UA Encourages Visually Impaired Teens in STEM

UA Encourages Visually Impaired Teens in STEM

By Alexis Blue, University Communications - June 13, 2018 Maggie Lindsay's long, white cane swishes back and forth through the...
Richard Kowalski of the UA-operated Catalina Sky Survey, talks about the discovery of 2018 LA, the small asteroid that exploded over southern Africa on June 2.

What it Takes to Discover Small Rocks in Space

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications - June 6, 2018 Once every month, on average, somewhere on Earth a fireball appears...
Optical Sciences Student Adriana Mitchell Off to Japan for Space Mission

Optical Sciences Student Off to Japan for Space Mission

By Amee Hennig, UA College of Optical Sciences - May 31, 2018 Adriana Mitchell , an undergraduate in the University...
Satellite flying through space over Earth with sun setting in the distance.

Air Force Research Lab, Others Tap UA Space Expertise

By Emily Litvack, UA Research, Discovery and Innovation - May 8, 2018 If we spent 60 years leaving every car...
This image of Mercury was created using infrared, red and violet filters that capture wavelengths both visible and invisible to the human eye; the colors shown here are only slightly different from what the human eye would see. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University APL/Carnegie Institute of Washington)

New Estimates of Mercury's Thin, Dense Crust

By Emily Walla, UA/NASA Space Grant Intern, University Communications - April 24, 2018 Mercury is small, fast and close to...
Reddy and Campbell examine their animation of a Chinese space station flyby. (Photo: Mari Cleven/Research, Discovery & Innovation)

UA Researchers Track Chinese Space Station as it Falls to Earth

By Emily Litvack - March 22, 2018 A defunct Chinese space station, Tiangong-1, is expected to fall to Earth any...