to fund travel to NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) and GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) for work on understanding the interior-atmosphere coupling during the magma ocean phase of terrestrial planet evolution.

• Lori Pigue gave an oral presentation in the Planetary Volcanism: Melt to Morphology session, on exploring relationships between effusive and explosive volcanism in the Montes Apenninus region of the Moon.
• Christian Tai Udovicic presented a talk Modeling the Effects of Basin Impacts and Ballistic Sedimentation on Ice in Lunar Cold Traps (#1528) about potential ice reservoirs near the lunar south pole. This talk and co-authored posters #1621, #1637 and #1687 were results from the 2021 LPI Exploration Science summer internship. Christian also co-authored poster #2113 about the rate of space weathering on the Moon.
• Oriel Humes gave an in-person talk on ultraviolet spectroscopy of Lucy mission targets.
• Helen Eifert gave a poster on the influence of alluvial fan process on grain size and morphometry of four fans in the Mojave Valley in the southwestern United States.
• Natalie Jones presented a poster in the “Environmental Analogs” session of LPSC, titled Mars Analog Environment: Compositional Remote Sensing of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Allie Rutledge, Mark Salvatore, and Briony Horgan (Purdue) were coauthors.
• Cece Thieberger and Chris Wolfe were co-authors on several presentations.
• Postdocs Cheng Ye and Valerie Payre also presented.
• Faculty Devon Burr, Christopher Edwards, Josh Emery, Mark Loeffler, Allie Rutledge, Mark Salvatore, and Cristina Thomas also presented.

to work with Kerri Donaldson-Hanna starting in August!

Congratulations, Audrey!

The Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity town hall was held on Friday, March 4th. Many tens of individuals from APS were in attendance, and a great deal of excellent ideas were presented to the EDI Committee. The EDI Committee is tracking suggestions from this event, and is already making forward progress in many associated areas!

A Dearth of Close-In Stellar Companions to M-dwarf TESS Objects of Interest

The challenge was to build a Titan lake sample return mission where it had to collect three samples from Ligeia Mare: 1) the atmosphere right above the lake, 2) the lake liquid, 2) solid material from either the shoreline or seafloor. Anna’s team decided to use a buoy+profiler design and the engineers built a system that would return 500 g of sample!! It was a great time and the team is already planning on doing yearly reunions!

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NASA Recognizes Early Career Planetary Scientists at Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

Olivine and carbonate-rich bedrock in Gusev crater and the Nili Fossae region of Mars may be altered ignimbrite deposits

Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Fellowship in Planetary Astronomy

NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, is a 747 with a telescope inside; the observatory flies above 40,000 feet. CoIs include Cristina Thomas and PhD student Oriel Humes.

The instrument scientist for the SOFIA program is Nicole Karnath — an alumna of our MS program from 2013!

She will be returning to research related to off-world sustainable agriculture and planetary protection. “I get to grow snap peas ‘on the Moon’ at JPL!”

Congratulation, Laura!

They brought 4 telescopes and set up in the parking lot of Market Village where the lodge staff reserved an area for the star party and turned of the lights!! Approximately 200 lodge patrons and others turned out of the event. Telescopes were operated by Michelle & Kevin Weidinger (FUSD Walker Observatory), Tracy Begay (AIMER Space Grant Intern) and Margie McCullough (Ed’s better half).

to bring the thin film station in the Astrophysical Materials Lab online.

to build the Planetary Environmental Research Chamber (PERCh).

A possible explanation for the blue spectral slope observed on B-type asteroids

This work shows that the blue spectral slope on these types of asteroids could simply be a consequence of the presence of micron-size dark material that will be mixed in the surface regolith.

Beau is, justifiably, having a lot of success in the graduate admissions process — congratulations, Beau, and very well deserved!

with Dr. Brendan Bowler to work on high-contrast imaging of young exoplanets with Hubble!”

Congratulations, Lauren — we are all very proud of you!

The papers re-assess calibrations for determining asteroid mineralogy from spectra, then applies new calibrations to archives spectra of S-complex asteroids.

A contemporary view of the ordinary chondrite boot I: Band parameter analysis dependency

A contemporary view of the ordinary chondrite boot II: Mineralogical variation of S-type asteroids

Spectral effects of regolith porosity in the mid-IR – Forsteritic olivine

Congratulations , Oriel!

AAS Journal Author Series: Catherine Clark on 2021RNAAS…5..280C

Once you’ve watched that video and been impressed by Catherine and her work you will not be surprised to learn that she has accepted a postdoc position at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

She’ll be working in the Exoplanet Exploration Program office with Karl Stapelfeldt and Eric Mamajek. (Part of the job is also at Caltech’s NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute, NexSci.)

Congratulations, Catherine!

LSST is the Legacy Survey of Space and Time — an all-sky survey that will come online in a year or two, using a large telescope in Chile, and that will revolutionize astronomy. Colin’s position is as Project Scientist, overseeing and working on Solar System science that will result from LSST.

Congratulations, Colin!

Congratulations, Phil!

Who wants to be an astronomer? — a story about Colin Chandler’s citizen science project to study active asteroids.

The top ten list is here.

Rapid rounding of icy clasts during simulated fluvial transport in the Titan Tumbler concerns results from our Titan Tumbler experiments simulating fluvial abrasion on Titan, conducted at Colgate University with NAU faculty Devon Burr, and Colgate colleague Joe Levy and students.

Sieved mass and shape data from simulated fluvial transport of icy clasts in the Titan Tumbler contains the full publicly available data set from the experiments.

Anna is of 32 selected out of 900 applicants.

he Caltech Space Challenge is a 5-Day International Student Space Mission Design Competition

Wow, Anna — congratulations!

Thanks for taking on this service, Cristina!

This includes funding for the next ~3.5 years for Edwards and a postdoc.

for at least another year following the augmentation of an existing award

under the supervision of Christopher Edwards, and we will soon be the proud owners of a class 10K clean room!