LPL Spotlight Stories

Artist's rendition of the Mars Odyssey.

Boynton's Mission to Mars, 30 Years in the Making

By Emily Litvack, October 17, 2016 Before his life's work got to Mars, Bill Boynton toiled, witnessed an explosion, and...
A star close to the size of the sun releases its outer layers near the end of its life. These materials disperse throughout space, and some of them end up in meteorites here on Earth.

Microscopic Findings, Astronomic Implications

By Rebecca Peiffer, NASA Space Grant Intern, University Relations - Communications, October 16, 2015 Imagine that you could travel back...
The Moon Tree, an American sycamore, is one of 64 that still survive after being planted in the wake of the Apollo 14 lunar mission.

The Life of the 'Moon Tree' on Campus

By Emily Litvack, University Relations - Communications, October 28, 2015 The year was 1971. Led Zeppelin was on a whirlwind,...
Picture of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

In a Hubble First, UA Astronomers Take Images of an Exoplanet Changing Over Time

By Emily Litvack - February 18, 2016 Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers at the University of Arizona have taken...
The actual mechanism causing asteroids to disrupt is still unknown but some obvious scenarios such as tidal forces caused by the Sun and direct sublimation of silicates have been ruled out. One of the remaining scenarios is that volatiles inside the asteroid sublimate at moderate temperatures and create enough pressure to blow up the body. A similar process on a smaller scale called spalling can also break up surface rocks. Credit: Lauri Voutilainen

Catalina Sky Survey Helps Explain Puzzling Observations

By University Relations - Communications, February 19, 2016 The ultimate fate of most near-Earth objects, or NEOs - asteroids and...
Mars as it may have looked like billions of years ago: Vast plumes of ash and water vapor billow into the atmosphere from the Tharsis region (on the right), a massive bulge of volcanic activity that created the tallest mountains in the solar system. Meanwhile, an icy ring of precipitation carves out valleys and canyons around a ring just south of the Martian equator. (Image: Didier Florentz)

The Reason for Mars' Tumultuous Past

By Daniel Stolte, University Relations - Communications, March 4, 2016 Deep below the surface of the withered, dead and barren...
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shortly before swinging into orbit around Mars ten years ago. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

HiRISE: 45,000 Mars Orbits and Counting

By University Relations - Communications, March 23, 2016 True to its purpose, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, the spacecraft...
A vast hotspot of intense volcanism underneath the dark, blotchy “face” of the moon known as Oceanis Procellarum (red area on right) resulted in less density there than in other parts of the moon. To restore balance, the moon’s axis shifted by six degrees. Traces of water ice deposits near the poles outline the movement from the location of the ancient (blue) to the present pole (teal). (Image by James Keane)

Tales of a Tilting Moon Hidden in Its Polar Ice

By Daniel Stolte, University Relations - Communications, March 22, 2016 A new study published Wednesday in Nature reports that the...
Pluto's "heart" may not always have been in its current position, two UA planetary researchers suggest. (Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

Pluto Follows its Cold, Cold Heart

By Daniel Stolte, University Relations - Communications, March 28, 2016 Pluto is a weird environment, according to James Keane ,...
Professor Renu Malhotra Named Regents' Professor

Malhotra Named Regents' Professor

April 12, 2016 LPL Professor Renu Malhotra is one of three University of Arizona faculty members named as Regents' Professors...