Explore Planetary Science

Bridging Exoplanet and Solar System Science

Next Frontiers in the Investigation of Extraterrestrial Organics

One Shot to Glory: Designing Adaptive Missions to the Outer Solar System and Beyond

Digital Twins for Solar System Exploration

Sample Return from all across the Solar System

What Do We Know About Uranus’s Interior? Preparing for a Mission to Uranus

Parameters of Biological Validation

Enabling Fast Response Missions to NEOs, ISOs, and LPCs

Ocean World Microhabitats: Targeting and Life Detection Techniques

Planetary Science of Venus and the Promise of In Situ Sampling Techniques

Mars through the Ages

Mars has been a large focus in US planetary exploration and, more recently, of international space agencies. Space missions (with rovers, landers, and orbiters) have increased our understanding of ancient and present Mars, and whether Mars had or has conditions that would allow life to emerge and persist. Dr. Bonnie Teece will first review Martian geochemistry and the organic molecules found on its surface, detailing the preservation of ancient (billions of years old) organic molecules and whether they could be preserved today. Dr. Brandi Carrier will then review Mars missions and discuss the samples currently being collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover. She will also highlight future mission concepts and plans for Mars astrobiology.

Building a Tiny Open-Source Space Program: From ChipSats to Autonomous Swarms

The aerospace industry has experienced a dramatic shift over the last decade: Flying a spacecraft has gone from something only government agencies and large corporations could afford to something universities and small startups can accomplish on a shoestring budget. This talk is about pushing these limits – building spacecraft that are dramatically smaller, simpler, and cheaper – and taking advantage of computation, networking, and autonomy to accomplish exciting new science and exploration missions, while also bringing spaceflight within reach of more people. Recent missions that will be highlighted include KickSat-2, which deployed the four-gram Sprite – the world’s smallest spacecraft; V-R3x, which demonstrated mesh networking between a group of CubeSats; and PY4, which demonstrated low-cost attitude control, formation flying, and radio-navigation capabilities on a swarm of two-kilogram satellites. Nearly all of the hardware and software created for these missions is readily available on the internet to be studied, copied, and reimagined by others.

What Makes a Model a Digital Twin? An Atmospheric Science-based Perspective

This presentation explores the evolution of digital twins from traditional modeling approaches. While models have long served as the backbone of knowledge representation and scenario development, digital twins have emerged as notable tools in the recent Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) era. Though conceptualized over three decades ago, the recent popularization of digital twins into prominence comes with hundreds of applications, accompanied by numerous definitions.

Sample Return Missions from Small Bodies – Hayabusa, Hayabusa2, and Beyond

Small bodies such as asteroids and comets are believed to preserve records of the origin and early evolution of the Solar System. To demonstrate their significance, JAXA has conducted two asteroid sample return missions: the Hayabusa mission, which returned samples from the S-type asteroid Itokawa in 2010, and Hayabusa2, which delivered samples from the C-type asteroid Ryugu in 2020. In this talk, Shogo Tachibana will present the findings from these samples, compare them with those from the B-type asteroid Bennu brought back by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, and discuss the achievements of small-body sample return missions. He will also share expectations for future sample return missions.

Field Exploration and Life Detection Sampling through Planetary Analogue Research (FELDSPAR)

Planetary exploration missions rely on orbiters to collect large-scale data, while landed missions, constrained to footprints of a rover or lander, collect data from individual samples on the mm to cm scale. It is currently not well-constrained how biosignatures, or even habitable zones, are distributed over these spatial scales. FELDSPAR has sought to conduct field studies analogous to Mars sample return from landing site selection, in-field sample selection, remote or stand-off analysis, in situ analysis, and home laboratory (sample return) analysis. This talk will present an overview of the data collected throughout the six years of FELDSPAR studies. Volcanic regions, particularly in Iceland, have similarities to Martian terrains spectroscopically and can have exceptionally low biomass. The four field sites studied include two recent lava fields at Fimmvörðuháls and Holuhraun, a recently deglaciated plain (Mælifellssandur), and an alluvial plain (Dyngjusandur), with samples collected in nested triangular grids every order of magnitude from the 10 cm scale to the 1 km scale. In-field analyses included overhead imagery at 1 m to 200 m elevation, in-field reflectance spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence. ATP content was analyzed in a field lab, and Raman spectroscopy, DNA content, metagenomic sequencing, and qPCR for fungal, bacterial, and archaeal DNA are ongoing in the home lab(s). Lessons learned from the various FELDSPAR rocky terrains will be presented, and their potential applicability, or lack thereof, to icy terrains will be discussed.

Journey to the Center of Mars – Scientific Results of the InSight Mission

After more than 10 years of planning, design, building and testing, InSight touched down in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars on November 26, 2018. In contrast to the 45 previous missions to Mars which have (when they survived) thoroughly explored its surface features, chemistry, atmosphere, and searched for past or present life, InSight focused for the first time on the deep interior of the planet, investigating the processes of terrestrial planet formation and evolution. Up until its demise last December from dust-covered solar arrays, it performed the first comprehensive surface-based geophysical measurements on Mars, using seismology and precision tracking to shed light on its fundamental structure, from crust to core. InSight has provided key information on the composition and structure of an Earth-like planet that has gone through most of the evolutionary stages of the Earth up to, but not including, plate tectonics. The InSight Principal Investigator will describe the mission, its science goals and some of its outstanding scientific results.

Webinar: Interstellar Comets – Visitors from Another Solar System – Natural or Artificial?

The recent discovery of the first interstellar object, 1I/`Oumuamua, passing through the solar system in 2017 has provoked intense, sustained interest by the scientific community – but the interest has not always been purely scientific. `Oumuamua was visible to ground based telescopes for less than a month, and a little longer from space. After this short period of study `Oumuamua’s characteristics were quite different from what scientists expected from the first interstellar object (ISO). There have been a huge number of papers written about this one object, energizing a new interdisciplinary discussion about planet formation. ISOs enable the close up study of material from other planetary systems, allowing us to assess similarities and differences in the chemistry and physical processes driving planetary growth in other planetary systems. The second ISO, 2I/Borisov, was discovered less than 2 years after the first, much sooner than expected, and has characteristics which are very different from the first ISO, looking more like a solar system comet.

Webinar: Lunar Trailblazer – A Caltech-led Pioneering Small Satellite for Lunar Water and Lunar Geology

Lunar Trailblazer, selected in June 2019 as one of NASA's first planetary science small satellite missions, is designed to produce the best maps of water on the Moon. Led by Caltech and managed by JPL, a Lockheed Martin smallsat will carry the JPL High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) shortwave infrared imaging spectrometer and the UK-contributed, University of Oxford/STFC RAL Space-built thermal infrared multispectral imager to 100-km lunar polar orbit. These instruments will collect data to simultaneously measure composition, temperature, and thermophysical properties of the Moon's surface.

Looking for Life As (we think) We Know It: Enceladus and Europa

As the Keck Institute for Space Studies workshop this week considers life in exotic non aqueous environments, two bodies in the outer solar system (Enceladus and Europa) host oceans of salty liquid water that are accessible, or potentially so, to spacecraft measurements. A Europa mission has just begun development and has substantial capabilities to assess ocean habitability. Enceladus appears to have a habitable ocean based on Cassini measurements, but confirmation and search for life will require a follow-on mission... one such mission has been proposed under the Discovery program.

Optical Remote Sensing of Earth and Planetary Surfaces

The development of space observation techniques and of user friendly software to process and handle those observations has opened a new era in geology and planetary sciences. The first global imaging systems made it possible to scan wide areas and search for promising sites for field investigations, or to get the contextual information needed to interpret local observations. As the resolution, whether spatial or spectral, and geometric accuracy improved, it became possible to make actual measurements and eventually monitor Earth surface changes. These possibilities offered new ways to investigate the geological processes at play in the landscape evolution on Earth and other planets. New opportunities are emerging, such as staring systems in particular, which will allow investigating processes and surface characteristics that cannot be observed with present systems. Rapid surface motions, such as from seismic waves, are one example.