Planetary Science Institute

PRESS RELEASE: https://buff.ly/4dLXXsR The Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society awarded Jamie Molaro, a Planetary Science Institute research scientist, the 2024 Carl Sagan Medal for outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist to the public. The award recognizes Molaro’s contributions to changing the way planetary science appears to the world, including efforts to connect art and science, and efforts to engage underserved communities. As a graduate student in 2013, Molaro established The Art of Planetary Science, an annual exhibition which invites the public to engage with science-driven art. She extended this effort into a series of workshops on space, art and society called Making Space, where participants learn how to use art as a tool for scientific inquiry and public discourse around space exploration. Molaro also formed the Disabled for Accessibility in Space, or DAIS, group to make science more accessible to Disabled individuals. She also leads research with AstroAccess, a project promoting inclusive human space exploration. Molaro’s other outreach activities include public interviews and presentations, and an appearance at Burning Man with an open-source rover. “I’ve been doing outreach work for over a decade, and it feels good to be recognized and to know that the work that I’m doing is valued by the scientific community and to know it’s having an impact on people,” Molaro said. IMAGE: Jamie Molaro leads a workshop in which participants translate scientific data and concepts into pieces of art. CREDIT: Alan Fischer/PSI

NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, or SSERVI, awarded PSI Research Scientist Jamie Molaro with the 2024 Susan Mahan Niebur Early Career Award. The award is given to an investigator who is within 10 years of receiving their doctorate and has made significant contributions to the exploration science communities. Molaro, who studies weathering and landscape evolution on airless icy and rocky bodies, spoke virtually to a crowd attending the award ceremony at Washington University in St. Louis on July 25 about how she tries to not let traditional expectations limit her work as a scientist. Molaro said she was feeling burnt out after an intense few years of research, so she sought out alternate ways to contribute to science and grow as a scientist. During this time, she founded a peer networking and support organization for Disabled scientists, called Disabled for Accessibility In Space, or DAIS. Through her work with DAIS she got involved with AstroAccess, where she led research to advance accessible design in space environments for future Disabled astronauts. Her passion for outreach started long ago. In 2013 she established The Art of Planetary Science, a public engagement effort to help people connect to science through art shows and workshops. “Efforts like AstroAccess and The Art of Planetary Science are about actively including non-academic and diverse voices and perspectives in space exploration,” she said. “And they make important contributions to the scientific community and society.” To other early-career scientists, she said, “Don’t let other people’s definition of science define how you do it or what makes you a scientist. The dimensionality that comes from experiences outside of traditional research will make you a better scientist.” Learn more: https://buff.ly/3T6Q8pI

Meet PSI Research Scientist Dr. Alexander Morgan. Dr. Alex Morgan is a geomorphologist interested in how planetary surfaces change with time. Most of his research centers on the history of water on Mars. Dr. Morgan grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, spending much of his childhood in the open spaces of California. When he enrolled at UC Santa Cruz, geology seemed like an obvious choice for his major but switched his undergraduate program to planetary geology. He worked as a research associate at NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute, received his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, and became a predoctoral fellow at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Dr. Morgan joined PSI in 2020 and recently collaborated on a paper that describes, maps, and dates how glaciers and glacial runoff sculpted the northeastern rim of Mars’ Hellas basin over the last 3 billion years. Learn more: https://buff.ly/3Xexqic

Meet Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Dr. Alan Howard. Dr. Alan Howard’s research interests focus on the geomorphology of the Earth and other planetary bodies, including fluvial processes such as sediment transport, river incision, stream meandering, and alluvial fans. Dr. Howard’s studies have been applied to the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Europa, Callisto, Titan, minor satellites of Saturn, and Pluto. Techniques include geomorphic mapping using remote sensing and topographic information, quantitative modeling of long-term landform evolution, and statistical characterization of landforms. He incorporated much of his quantitative modeling work into the publicly available landform evolution model MARSSIM. Dr. Howard’s current planetary studies focus primarily on Mars and Pluto, including a recent paper that describes, maps, and dates how glaciers and glacial runoff sculpted the northeastern rim of Mars’ Hellas basin over the last 3 billion years. Learn more: https://buff.ly/3Xb057V

https://buff.ly/3X90p70 Mars has long captured the imagination of scientists and the general public alike. With its rusty-red surface, it’s not just another planet; it’s our closest neighbor with compelling mysteries waiting to be unraveled. Recent discoveries by NASA's Mars rovers, particularly the Curiosity and Perseverance, have both astonished researchers and invigorated the search for life beyond Earth. Unexpected findings and new evidence point toward the planet’s potentially habitable past. One of the most exciting revelations came from Curiosity when it accidentally crushed a rock, discovering glimmering yellow crystals inside. According to NASA, this rock was unlike any other previously encountered, as it turned out to be composed of elemental sulfur rather than more common sulfurous minerals. Curiosity's project scientist Ashwin Vasavada remarked, “Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert.” This surprising discovery raises questions about how such unusual formations occur on the Martian surface. Curiosity encountered this sulfur rock during exploration of Gediz Vallis, located on Mount Sharp, which stands at 3.4 miles tall. Scientists believe this area was shaped by ancient bodies of water, showing Mars was once host to flowing streams and sprawling lakes. “This was not a quiet period on Mars,” said Becky Williams from the Planetary Science Institute. The valley is thought to have experienced intense geological activities, indicated by multiple flows and potentially energetic flooding events.

#JunoCam: Enhanced Perijove 63 Storms Taken by the JunoCam onboard NASA's Juno spacecraft, the PJ63_37 raw image framelets were processed into this enhanced image. The contrast and color saturation have been increased and small-scale features sharpened. North is up. Compare this with last week's PolarZ Map using the same image data. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Björn Jónsson Want to participate in citizen science and process JunoCam images? https://buff.ly/3eWoHuw

https://buff.ly/3XaQj5E The strongest gamma-ray burst (GRB) of the century, GRB20221009A, has been detected by the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter Gamma-ray Spectrometer (KGRS) instrument onboard the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO). KGRS detected GRB221009A at a distance of 1.508 million kilometers from the Earth. The full duration of the main burst was recorded between 13:20 and 13:26 on October 9, 2022, with peak counts of over 1000 times background. PSI Senior Scientist Dr. Naoyuki Yamashita is a co-author.

https://buff.ly/3SXrmbh NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, or SSERVI, awarded PSI Research Scientist Jamie Molaro with the 2024 Susan Mahan Niebur Early Career Award. The award is given to an investigator who is within 10 years of receiving their doctorate and has made significant contributions to the exploration science communities. Molaro, who studies weathering and landscape evolution on airless icy and rocky bodies, spoke virtually to a crowd attending the award ceremony at Washington University in St. Louis on July 25 about how she tries to not let traditional expectations limit her work as a scientist. However, Molaro said she was feeling burnt out after an intense few years of research, so she sought out alternate ways to contribute to science and grow as a scientist. During this time, she founded a peer networking and support organization for Disabled scientists, called Disabled for Accessibility In Space, or DAIS. Through her work with DAIS she got involved with AstroAccess, where she led research to advance accessible design in space environments for future Disabled astronauts. Her passion for outreach started long ago. In 2013 she established The Art of Planetary Science, a public engagement effort to help people connect to science through art shows and workshops. “Efforts like AstroAccess and The Art of Planetary Science are about actively including non-academic and diverse voices and perspectives in space exploration,” she said. “And they make important contributions to the scientific community and society.”

A new paper published in Icarus describes, maps and dates how glaciers and glacial runoff sculpted the northeastern rim of Mars’ Hellas basin over the last 3 billion years. The paper was authored in part by PSI senior scientist Alan Howard and research scientist Alexander Morgan. Before the research began, the team was intrigued by the dramatic features in Hellas basin, especially in and around Batson crater, which they thought might hint at a history of decaying glaciers. Until now, these features had not yet been adequately described and characterized as being glacial. There are many ways glaciers leave their mark on a landscape. On Earth, glaciers primarily scour the underlying rock as they slowly flow downhill. But on Mars, with its weaker gravity, the physical processes leading to this behavior require thicker ice to achieve. So, the team argues that instead, during a time when Mars was warmer, it’s more likely that meltwater carved the landscape as it flowed beneath and out of glaciers. Learn more: https://buff.ly/46UTT72

A 140-year-old mathematical result can help extract new value from modern oceanographic observations, as we show in a new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, {Lilly, Feske, Fox-Kemper, and Early (2024)}. Integral theorems linking the spatial derivatives of a vector field to its values along a boundary play a central role in physics. Yet a generalized theorem, dating back to J. W. Gibbs and the origins of vector calculus in the late 1800’s, is little known today. We re-examined this gradient tensor theorem, its interpretation, and its expression in modern notational systems. Using this result, observations of an oceanic vortex by a single moving platform, such as a ship, that traces out closed cells (the triangles) can be used to infer spatially averaged rates of strain—important measures of small-scale deformation that are otherwise challenging to observe. Full paper: https://buff.ly/3STbvuB