Alumnus John Moores (2008) was named Science Advisor to the President of Canada. He is the York Research Chair in Space Exploration at York University and is the Director of Technologies for Exo-Planetary Science with Canada's Collaborative Research and Training Experience Program. Dr. Moores previously held positions as Associate Dean of Research and Graduate studies for the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University.

Dr. Moores is a Participating Scientist on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission and contributed to the 2005 Cassini Huygens probe to Titan and to the Phoenix mission to Mars.

Congratulations to Dr. Barbara Cohen (2000), Principal Investigator for NASA's Lunar Flashlight, which launched successfully on Dec. 11 and has begun its four-month trip to the Moon. Lunar Flashlight is a small satellite on a mission to seek out surface water ice in permanently shadowed craters of the Moon's south pole. Flashlight fans can track the SmallSat using NASA's fully interactive Eyes on the Solar System tool.

Lunar Flashlight will use a near-rectilinear halo orbit – designed for energy efficiency – to take it as near as 9 miles to the lunar south pole. The SmallSat has a reflectometer equipped with four lasers that emit near-infrared light in wavelengths readily absorbed by surface water ice. If the lasers hit bare rock or regolith, the light will reflect back to the spacecraft. However, if the target absorbs the light, the presence of water ice would be indicated. The greater the absorption, the more ice there may be.

Data collected by Lunar Flashlight will be compared with observations made by other lunar missions to help reveal the distribution of surface water ice on the Moon for potential use by future astronauts.

Dr. Cohen is a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Read more about Lunar Flashlight.

LPL alumnus David Grinspoon (1989) was elected an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in astronomy for 2021. He was recognized as a AAAS Fellow for his distinguished research comparative terrestrial atmospheres with a particular focus on Venus, and for prolific public science communication via books, articles, lectures, and other media. 

Dr. Grinspoon is a Senior Scientist with the Planetary Science Institute. He has served on the science teams of several spacecraft missions and has published numerous papers on the evolution of the atmospheres, planets and potential biology of Earthlike planets. David has written and edited six books, including Lonely Planets the Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, which won a PEN Literary award for nonfiction, and Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future, named a Best Science Book of 2016 by NPR’s Science Friday. His articles have been published in prestigious journals and magazines; his Cosmic Relief column appears regularly in Sky & Telescope Magazine. 

In 2013, Dr. Grinspoon was appointed as the inaugural Chair of Astrobiology at the U.S. Library of Congress where he studied the human impact on Earth systems and organized a public symposium on the Longevity of Human Civilization. Grinspoon has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at four universities and online, given dozens of public lectures about climate change in the Solar System, and collaborated with numerous scholars from the humanities on the ethical, spiritual and political dimensions of space exploration. He has appeared widely on radio and television, including as a frequent guest-host of StarTalk Radio. The American Astronomical Society awarded him the Carl Sagan Medal for Public Communication of Planetary Science. Asteroid 22410 Grinspoon, a main-belt asteroid, is named after him. 

Dr. Kathryn (Kat) Volk, LPL Associate Staff Scientist, is the recipient of the 2022 Vera Rubin Early Career Prize. The Division on Dynamical Astronomy (DDA) of the American Astronomical Society awards the prize annually to recognize an early career dynamicist who demonstrates excellence in scientific research in dynamical astronomy, has had impact and influence on the field, and shows a promise of continued excellence as demonstrated by past practice in research, teaching, and the advancement and support of the field of dynamical astronomy.

Kat is a 2013 alumna of LPL, completing her Ph.D. under the direction of Regents Professor Renu Malhotra. She uses theory, numerics, and observations in her research, which spans both Solar System and exoplanetary science.

Dr. Volk has made fundamental contributions to the observational characterization of small-body populations through her core role in the Outer Solar System Origins Survey and her work to apply her extensive numerical investigations to theoretical models of the early Solar System. Her research has been influential in quantifying the rates at which Jupiter-family comets are generated from their hypothesized source in the scattered disk beyond Neptune and in characterizing the underlying resonant trans-Neptunian object populations as observational anchors for theories of the early Solar System.

Dr. Volk has also significantly shaped the field of exoplanetary science with her influential proposal that most planetary systems begin in compact configurations and her fundamental contributions to our understanding of the long-term dynamical stability of exoplanetary systems. Kat's research demonstrates that the future lifetimes of mature exoplanet systems are set by slow chaotic diffusion induced by the overlap of secular (rather than mean-motion) resonances.

Dr. Volk will give the prize lecture at the 54th annual DDA meeting in the spring of 2023.

NASA has named LPL alumnus Dr. Moses Milazzo as the first Chief Scientist for the Planetary Data Ecosystem (PDE). Moses completed his dissertation, Remote Sensing of Thermally Induced Activity on Io and Mars, with advisor Alfred McEwen in 2005. He is a planetary scientist and educator specializing in visible and near-infrared remote sensing, as well as planetary data processing. Moses has been involved with eight NASA spacecraft missions and has contributed significantly to the development of planetary remote sensing, image processing, cartographic mapping and calibration techniques for a variety of missions and data types. In this new role, Moses will represent the PDE to NASA and serve as a link between the PDE community, the Planetary Data System, and NASA Headquarters.

Alumna Michelle Thompson (2016), an assistant professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, is on a team that will analyze Moon rocks and lunar soil samples from the Apollo 17 mission.

LPL alum (1978) Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, discusses the institution's past, present, and future roles in the dialogue between faith and science.

LPL alumnus Jonathan Fortney (2004), professor of astronomy and astrophysics at U.C. Santa Cruz, has been appointed by the Simons Foundation as a Simons Investigator in Astrophysics. The award provides $500,000 over five years to support his research on planetary atmospheres. The Simons Investigator program supports outstanding theoretical scientists most productive years, when they are establishing creative new research directions, providing leadership to the field and effectively mentoring junior scientists. Fortney studies the atmospheres, interiors, and thermal evolution of planets, including exoplanets, and develops numerical models to explore many aspects of the physics of planets.

Congratulations to LPL alums Nancy Chabot (1999), DART Coordination Lead, and Andy Rivkin (1997), DART Co-Investigation Team Lead. On November 24, NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. DART is heading to the near-Earth binary asteroid Didymos, where, in September 2022, it will smash into Didymos' moonlet, called Dimorphos. The goal is to test if the technique, which will alter Dimorphos' speed and, consequently, its orbit around Didymos, could be used to defend the Earth from potential impactors.

Learn more about DART from Nancy and Andy at the links below:

• Gravity Assist: How to Move an Asteroid, with Nancy Chabot
• In a First Test of Its Planetary Defense Efforts, NASA's Going to Shove an Asteroid
• NASA is ramming a spacecraft into an asteroid as part of a planetary defense test mission
• NASA’s DART Mission Could Help Cancel an Asteroid Apocalypse

For her outstanding contributions to planetary science, LPL alumna Dr. Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle was named the 2020-2021 Alumna of the Year for the College of Science by the Arizona Alumni Association. Zibi was recognized at the November 4th, 2021, Alumni of the Year Awards Ceremony.

Zibi earned her doctorate from LPL in 1998. Her dissertation research combined remote-sensing observations and geophysical modeling of impact craters to understand the cratering process and what craters can tell us about the surfaces and interiors of the planets and moons on which they are formed.

After working on the Galileo, Cassini, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter missions while at UA, she led a team that successfully proposed the Europa Imaging System (known as EIS) for NASA's Europa Clipper mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2024 to explore the habitability of this ice-covered, ocean world moon of Jupiter.

In 2019, NASA selected Dragonfly, led by Zibi as Principal Investigator, as its next New Frontiers mission. Dragonfly, which is scheduled to launch in 2027, is a robotic rotorcraft lander that will spend ~3 years exploring Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Taking advantage of Titan's low gravity and dense atmosphere, Dragonfly will fly from place to place to make measurements that will help us to understand the chemistry of this organic-rich, ocean world. Titan's chemical processes may be similar to what occurred on the early Earth before life developed here. Dragonfly is the fourth NASA New Frontiers mission and the first led by a woman. 

In addition to her project leadership, Zibi has held several important and influential roles in the planetary science community. She has served on the leadership committee for the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences, the steering committee of NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group, and the National Research Council’s Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science—the highest-level advisory group for NASA planetary science.