LPL Spotlight Stories

Undergraduate students Ryan Bronson, Sameep Arora, Damon Marco Colpo, Lindsie Jeffries, and Evelyn Hunten peer out from a telescope they built to track satellites.

Students Build Telescopes to Track Satellites

By Emily Litvack, UA Research, Dicovery and Innovation - May 22, 2017 Why should you buy what you can make...
Close-up of a focused ion beam.

So You Want to Analyze Asteroid Dirt

By Emily Litvack - May 18, 2017 In the year 2023, priceless property of the American people will land somewhere...
This impact occurred between December 2003 and November 2005. The main crater itself is only 23 meters across, but the impact event created markings spreading more than a kilometer outward. The interior stands out as blue because the impact excavated a cavity into rocks below the surface that has a different composition than the overlying dust. Some distant dark-toned spots and streaks were created when ejecta from the main crater flew out and re-impacted the surface, producing chains of secondary craters.

HiRISE Brings the Red Planet's Beauty to Your Coffee Table

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications - May 15, 2017 A gorgeous, sumptuous tome chock-full of stunning images taken by the...
UA alumnus Dante Lauretta led the design, build and launch of a spacecraft to Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid, to collect a sample and return that sample to Earth. (Photo: Symeon Platts/UA)

Alumni Achievement Award for Dante Lauretta

By UA Alumni Association - May 9, 2017 Dante Lauretta , leader of the University of Arizona's biggest space mission,...
An artist’s rendering of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s survey pattern during its Earth-Trojan asteroid search (not to scale). The search occurs Feb. 9-20 as the spacecraft transits the Earth’s L4 Lagrangian region. (Illustration: Heather Roper/UA)

Surveying the Scenery 90 Million Miles From Earth

By Daniel Stolte/UA News and Erin Morton/LPL - February 9, 2017 A NASA spacecraft has begun its search for an...
Ceres' lonely mountain, Ahuna Mons, is seen in this simulated perspective view. The elevation has been exaggerated by a factor of two. The view was made using enhanced-color images from NASA's Dawn mission. (Image: NASA)

The Mystery of Ahuna Mons, the Lonely Ice Volcano

By American Geophysical Union/University Communications - February 2, 2017 A recently discovered solitary ice volcano on the dwarf planet Ceres...
Small near-Earth asteroids are important targets of study because not much is known about them. By characterizing the smallest of the bunch, scientists can better understand the population of objects from which they originate: large asteroids, which have a much smaller likelihood of impacting Earth. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It's a Bird … It's a Plane … It's the Tiniest Asteroid!

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications - November 30, 2016 Astronomers have obtained observations of the smallest asteroid ever characterized in...
In this image of Pluto taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, different colors represent different compositions of surface ices, revealing a surprisingly active body. (Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

Cracked, Frozen and Tipped Over: New Clues From Pluto's Past

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications - November 16, 2016 Sputnik Planitia, a 1,000-kilometer-wide basin within the iconic heart-shaped region observed...
An artist’s concept of the Psyche spacecraft, a proposed mission for NASA’s Discovery program that would explore the huge metal Psyche asteroid from orbit (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Psyche: Unexpected Discoveries on a Metal World

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications - October 21, 2016 Astronomers have discovered possible evidence for water on the surface of...
An artist's illustration of Planet Nine, a hypothesized Neptune-size planet orbiting in the distant reaches of our solar system (Illustration: Robert Hurt/Caltech)

More Evidence for 9th Planet on Solar System's Fringes

By Daniel Stolte - University Communications, October 21, 2016 As the search for a hypothetical, unseen planet far beyond Neptune's...