NAU Astronomy & Planetary Science In the News

Mission control watch party of DART marking impact

Posted by Ed on September 28, 2022

On Monday, [Sept. 26], at 4:13 p.m. (Arizona time), more than 7 million miles away, NASA’s DART mission, Double Asteroid Redirection Test, successfully slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, making history as the first step toward a possible future planetary defense strategy.

Cristina Thomas, assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science and team lead on the DART mission, along with Jason Wilder, vice president for research, were at Mission control in Laurel, Maryland to witness… Read more

How an astroinformatics bootcamp is making the universe accessible

Posted by Author on Source on September 2, 2022

David Trilling, SICCS professor (and APS affiliate faculty) Mike Gowanlock, and SICCS MS student Daniel Kramer ran an astroinformatics boot camp before the beginning of the semester:

Seven students from a range of majors participated in the bootcamp to learn skills in computer science, astronomy, and astroinformatics. The goal of the boot camp was to increase participation in astroinformatics by students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Read the full article here!

NASA awards scientist $848,013 grant for ongoing study of potentially hazardous asteroids

Posted by Author on Source on July 18, 2022

Cristina Thomas at her computer

Assistant professor Cristina Thomas of Northern Arizona University’s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, who started working on the project as a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , has now taken the lead as the principal investigator, funded through a $848,013 grant from NASA for the next three years.

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PhD student Oriel Humes recently flew on SOFIA

Posted by Ed on July 13, 2022

PhD student Oriel Humes recently flew on Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which is NASA’s 747 airplane with a hole in the side of it through which a telescope points.

SOFIA soars over the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains with its telescope door open during a test flight. SOFIA is a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft. Credits: NASA/Jim Ross SOFIA with telescope bay open.

Oriel writes, “I wanted to share… Read more

What a martian meteorite can teach us about Earth’s origins

Posted by Author on Source on July 12, 2022

“This meteorite recorded the first stage of the evolution of Mars and, by extension, of all terrestrial planets, including the Earth,” said Valerie Payré, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science. “As the Earth lost its old surface mainly due to plate tectonics, observing such settings in extremely ancient terrains on Mars is a rare window into the ancient Earth surface that we lost a long time ago.”

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