Throughout the Spring 2020 academic semester CLASS in partnership with the Florida Space Institute will be holding a seminar speaker series. The series is open to everyone. Seminars last 45 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. If you are interested in presenting, wish to recommend someone for a presentation, or would like to be on the mailing list, please contact us.
| Date | Speaker |
|---|---|
| 1/14 | Philipp Reiß, ESA |
| 1/28 | Bob Lamboray, Luxembourg Space Agency |
| 2/11 | Koorosh Araghi, NASA JSC |
| 2/25 | Amanda Hendrix, PSI |
| 3/24 | Joel Sercel, TransAstra |
| 4/7 | Joost Oorschot, Maana Electric |
Date: Feb 25, 2020
Time: 11:30am
Zoom link: https://sservi.zoom.us/j/704946646
The exploration of the planetary surfaces in the UV
Abstract
In this talk I will review our recent work studying surfaces processing on airless bodies, using data from two ultraviolet facilities: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LRO LAMP) and the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE). We are using LRO LAMP data to study compositional variations and responses to space weathering processes, including diurnally-varying hydration, across the lunar surface. LAMP senses, at far-UV wavelengths, a small amount (<1% monolayer) of water on the lunar surface, thermally adsorbing and desorbing depending on local temperature throughout the lunar day. A primary source of the water is likely bombardment by solar wind protons onto the surface of the airless Moon. Such water could eventually make its way to the polar regions or cold traps where it permanently remains and represents a potential resource. Space weathering on other airless bodies, namely C-complex asteroids, has different effects as shown in analyses of near-UV-visible wavelength data. We use a combination of data from IUE, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and ground-based telescopes to compare the spectra of these low-albedo class objects and compare them with laboratory-measured mixtures as well as with the spectra of carbonaceous chondrites. We find that UV-visible spectral differences between meteorites and the asteroids, as well as the asteroids’ low albedos, could be due to space-weathering-derived carbons (such as amorphous or graphitized carbon) on the surfaces of these bodies.
Amanda Hendrix, PSI
Amanda R. Hendrix is a Senior Scientist with the Planetary Science Institute, based in Boulder. She worked for twelve years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was the Deputy Project Scientist for the Cassini–Huygens mission (2010-2012). She has been a scientific investigator on the Cassini, Galileo and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter missions, a principal investigator on NASA research and Hubble Space Telescope observing programs. Her science focus is on moons and small bodies in the solar system, including Earth’s moon and those of Jupiter and Saturn, their composition and evolution. Hendrix chairs NASA’s Roadmaps to Ocean Worlds study and is the current Chair of the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS). She is the director of NASA’s Toolbox for Research and Exploration (TREX). She co-authored Beyond Earth: Our Path to a new Home in the Planets, published by Penguin/Random house in Nov 2016. Hendrix received a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder.