Fall

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.

by Claire Cook

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Conference (LPLC) marks the start of the academic year for the LPL community and other planetary scientists in the Tucson area. This year, LPLC was hosted in a hybrid format on August 19. Over 70 participants gathered at the Kuiper Building and on Zoom to watch 30 presentations given by faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students from LPL and other departments. Among the five invited speakers was Galen Bergsten, winner of the “Best Grad Student Presentation” in 2021. Galen gave a great talk titled There’s No Place Like Home: Exoplanets and Accessibility in a Local Context, which addressed both exoplanet science and how to make the science more inclusive and accessible. The “Best Grad Student Presentation” award went to Sam Myers, with a talk on near-Earth asteroids titled Comparing NEATM-like Models to IRTF and NEOWISE Data to Constrain Model Results. Sam will be invited to present at LPLC in 2023.

In addition to the invited speakers, 25 others gave presentations about their current or upcoming research. LPLC concluded with a keynote from OSIRIS-APEX Deputy Principal Investigator Dr. Michael Nolan on The OSIRIS-APEX Mission. A catered reception followed the conference, helping to keep the discussions going and bringing together the local planetary science community. The LPLC Organizing Committee, composed solely of LPL graduate students, is proud of this year's excellent turnout, engagement, and participation. We wish to thank the Tucson planetary science community for your continued support and are looking forward to another successful conference next fall!

Recent rankings by U.S. News & World Report and the National Science Foundation (NSF) once again recognize UArizona as one of the world's top research institutions.

UArizona ranked 108 out of 2,000 higher education institutions across 95 countries in the 2023 by U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities ranking, released on Oct. 24. The university was No. 44 among universities in the U.S. and No. 23 among public universities. UArizona again earned its best placement in the space science category, placing No. 10 overall, No. 6 (up from No. 7 last year) in the U.S. and No. 2 among public universities. The university earned top marks for its research reputation in space sciences, along with the number of citations and publications by UArizona researchers.

U.S. News & World Report's Best Global Universities ranks colleges and universities in 47 separate subjects. UArizona earned a spot on 34 of the subject ranking lists. The university's overall research reputation ranked No. 49 in the U.S. and No. 94 globally. To produce the global rankings, U.S. News & World Report uses a methodology that focuses on a university's global and regional reputation and academic research performance using indicators such as citations and publications. U.S. News uses a separate methodology for the subject-specific rankings that is based on academic research performance in each subject. U.S. News uses various measures, including publications and citations, as well as indicators for global and regional reputation in each specific subject area.

On Dec. 13, the NSF Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey again ranked UArizona among the nation's top public research universities, with $770 million in total research activity in fiscal year 2021. The HERD survey annually ranks more than 900 colleges and universities and is considered the primary source of information on research and development expenditures at U.S. colleges and universities. UArizona also retained its No. 1 ranking in astronomy and astrophysics (including planetary science) expenditures at more than $113 million – more than $40 million ahead of the No. 2-ranked university.

UArizona saw an increase of more than $9 million over its fiscal year 2020 total. Research and development expenditures rank No. 20 among public institutions and No. 36 overall, placing UArizona in the top 4% of all U.S. universities ranked in this list, both public and private. UArizona ranked No. 5 in NASA-funded activity and No. 6 in the physical sciences.

UArizona has held the No. 1 ranking in astronomy/astrophysics and planetary science expenditures each year since 1987.

Read more: 

• NSF: UArizona again ranks among top 20 public research universities, No. 1 in astronomy and astrophysics
• UArizona Space Sciences shine in US News Best Global Universities ranking

LPL Assistant Professor Dr. Kristopher Klein received the 2022 Landau-Spitzer Award for Outstanding Contributions to Plasma Physics from the American Physical Society (APS). 

The Landau-Spitzer Award recognizes an individual or group of researchers for outstanding theoretical, experimental, or technical contributions in plasma physics and for advancing the collaboration and unity between Europe and the United States of America by joint research or research that advances knowledge that benefits the two communities in a unique way.

Dr. Klein was recognized as part of a team with colleagues in Iowa and London for the theoretical development of the field-particle correlation technique and its application to spacecraft measurements directly showing that Landau damping heats electrons in turbulent plasmas that comprise Earth's magnetosheath.

"This work represents years of collaborations spanning a number of domestic and international institutions, combining theoretical predictions with measurements of near-Earth space in order to better understand fundamental processes at play in our solar system and throughout the Universe," said Dr. Klein. "I am honored to have been a part of this effort and am thankful that APS selected my colleagues and me for the 2022 Landau-Spitzer Award."

Dr. Klein's research focuses on studying fundamental plasma phenomena that govern the dynamics of systems within our heliosphere as well as more distant astrophysical bodies. He has particular interest in identifying heating and energization mechanisms in turbulent plasmas, such as the Sun's extended atmosphere known as the solar wind, as well as evaluating the effects of the departure from local thermodynamic equilibrium on nearly collisionless plasmas which are ubiquitous in space environments.

These systems are studied with a combination of analytic theory and numerical simulation, including large-scale nonlinear turbulence codes such as AstroGK, HVM, and gkyell. These theoretical predictions are compared to in situ observations from spacecraft including NASA's Helios, Wind, MMS, and Parker Solar Probe missions. Comparing theory with local plasma measurements enables answering a variety of questions about the behavior of plasma in our solar system.

Dr. Klein is also helping to lead the design of future heliospheric missions, and is serving as the Deputy Principal Investigator for the HelioSwarm mission, a planned observatory to launch by the end of this decade nine spacecraft to measure the dynamics and evolution of turbulent plasmas at multiple points across multiple scales.

“This award recognizes what we in LPL have long recognized: Dr. Klein is an exceptional young scientist who is making a major impact in the study of the Solar wind,” said Dr. Mark Marley, Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at UArizona. “Kris' research not only helps us to understand the complex dynamics of the plasma flowing through the Solar System, but he is also helping to build new collaborations between scientists in the United States and Europe. We are very fortunate to have him here at the University of Arizona."

The American Physical Society (APS) is a nonprofit membership organization working to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through its outstanding research journals, scientific meetings, and education, outreach, advocacy, and international activities. APS represents more than 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and throughout the world. 

Associate Professor Lynn Carter, a UArizona Distinguished Scholar, was selected to be the Science Team Lead for the NASA JPL VenSAR radar system onboard the EnVision mission to Venus. EnVision, a low-altitude polar orbiter, is the M5 mission candidate in the ESA Science Program. It will carry 5 instruments and 1 experiment (an S-band Synthetic Aperture Radar, a Subsurface Radar, 3 spectrometers and a radio science experiment). EnVision will investigate Venus from its inner core to its atmosphere at an unprecedented scale of resolution, characterizing in particular, core and mantle structure, signs of active and past geologic processes and looking for evidence of the past existence of oceans. EnVision will help understanding why the most Earth-like planet in the solar system has turned out so differently, opening a new era in the exploration of our closest neighbor.

Spacewatch is enjoying the return to full-time regular operations, which resumed on December 7 after recovery from the Contreras Wildfire in June. Kitt Peak had previously been closed from March 2020 through October 2020 due to COVID, allowing only remote observing and daytime visits until June 2021.

Lightning caused the fire on June 11 in the Baboquivari Mountain range. Kitt Peak was evacuated on June 14 when high winds and dry conditions greatly accelerated the approach of the fire toward the observatory. Heroic efforts from the firefighter and flight crews and incident management teams preserved all of the science facilities. Only four structures were lost: two outbuildings, a residence, and the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) dorm. This is remarkable considering the fire swept over the southwest ridge that includes the ARO, Very Long Baseline Array antenna, and MDM. The official incident burn size was 29,482 acres.

The fire was deemed contained on June 24 and Bureau of Indian Affairs Type 4 Incident Management Team and National Burned Area Emergency Response Team took over. The Arizona Department of Transportation and the Tohono O’odham Utility Authority began work on the road and electrical infrastructures. Helicopters were required to fly in new electrical poles sited away from the road.

Spacewatch staff were allowed to begin clean-up operations in August, while on alert for emergency evacuation in case of a monsoon. After Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) installed temporary extra generators and a Starlink dish, Spacewatch was able to restart operations on September 6, although operations were hampered by the unreliability of generators — dome shutters are not opened unless there is some form of backup power. Line power was restored to the summit on October 7. With extremely limited bandwidth for the summit, Spacewatch was restricted to onsite observing and experienced frequent blips in connectivity. The internet fiber connection was restored on December 8, bringing Spacewatch back to full strength. However, the road is still closed to traffic, with only staff or experienced tenant drivers permitted to navigate the road without an escort vehicle.

In the early hours of Nov. 19, the skies over southern Ontario, Canada, lit up as a tiny asteroid harmlessly streaked across the sky high in Earth’s atmosphere, broke up, and likely scattered small meteorites over the southern coastline of Lake Ontario. Roughly 1 meter (3 feet) wide, the asteroid was detected 3.5 hours before impact, making this event the sixth time in history a small asteroid has been tracked in space before impacting Earth’s atmosphere.

Asteroid 2022 WJ1 was discovered by LPL's Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) on the evening of Nov. 18 during routine search operations for near-Earth objects. CSS observations were quickly reported to the Minor Planet Center and the data were then automatically posted to the Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page.

NASA’s Scout impact hazard assessment system automatically fetched the new data from that page and began calculating the object’s possible trajectory and chances of impact. Seven minutes after the asteroid was posted on the confirmation page, Scout had determined it had a 25% probability of hitting Earth’s atmosphere, with possible impact locations stretching from the Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast of North America to Mexico. More observations were then provided by the astronomical community to better refine the asteroid’s trajectory and possible impact site.

As CSS continued to track the asteroid over the next few hours, Scout used this new data to update the asteroid’s trajectory and the system’s assessment of the chance of impact, posting those results on the hazard-assessment system’s webpage.

2022 WJ1 is the fourth pre-impact asteroid discovered so far by CSS and attests to the ability of the survey to rapidly find and enable the orbit characterization of potentially hazardous objects.

Brooke Carruthers (Molecular and Cellular Biology major, Astrobiology minor) was been selected as a Universities Space Research Association (USRA) Distinguished Undergraduate for 2022 based on the strength of her academic accomplishments and leadership qualities. She was one of 5 recipients chosen from 85 applicants. Brooke was selected to receive the James B. Willett Education Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes the efforts of the late James B. Willett, a noted astrophysicist who worked with USRA through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Headquarters. 

The USRA awards are granted to students who tackle challenging problems in aerospace engineering, space science research and exploration, demonstrate leadership, promote diversity in science and engineering, and are poised to make significant contributions to their fields. Faculty from USRA’s member universities reviewed the applications and made their recommendations for selection to the USRA President and CEO, Dr. Jeffery Isaacson.

The research award consists of a certificate, an award letter, and a scholarship in the amount of $5,000. Regents Professor Renu Malhotra, current chair of USRA Council of Institutions, presented the award to Brooke on behalf of USRA and UArizona. Read more about Brooke in the Spring 2022 LPL Newsletter.

Emileigh Shoemaker is a 2022 recipient of an Amelia Earhart Fellowship. Emileigh is a fifth-year Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Lynn Carter. Her research focuses on investigating the subsurface of volcanic environments on Mars and Earth using orbital and ground penetrating radar (GPR) systems. Eruptive products like lava flows from effusive volcanic activity or ash and pumice from explosive activity provide a glimpse into the evolution of the interior of a planet. On Mars, volcanic activity is primarily effusive—resulting in shield-like volcanic edifices and extensive lava flows similar to those seen in Hawaii. Explosive activity is less common; however, there is evidence on the surface that these types of eruptions have taken place in the past.

Emileigh uses the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument currently orbiting Mars to investigate the subsurface and the stratigraphy of the largest volcanic province on the planet known as Tharsis. This region has been volcanically active for most of Mars’ history which makes it an excellent site to study the evolution of the planet over time. SHARAD has assisted Emileigh in making measurements of the thickness of lava flows and ash deposits there.

Emileigh has taken part in several NASA field expeditions to the Icelandic Highlands, where she mapped ice buried by ash and pumice from two eruptions of the Askja Volcano using GPR. This area was used to test operational methods to map subsurface ice using these handheld radar systems for future astronauts who will need to access this precious resource during missions on other terrestrial bodies like Mars and the Moon. During these expeditions, Emileigh is able speak to the general public and hopes these interactions will encourage other students to participate in planetary field geology and geophysics in the future. Read more about Emileigh's research with the NASA GIFT Team in Iceland in the Fall 2021 LPL Newsletter.