Search Publications
A Snowball in Hell: The Potential Steam Atmosphere of TOI-1266c
Batalha, Natasha E.; Mahadevan, Suvrath; Hedges, Christina +4 more
TOI-1266c is a recently discovered super-Venus in the radius valley orbiting an early M dwarf. However, its notional bulk density (~2.2 g cm-3) is consistent with a large volatile fraction, suggesting that it might have volatile reservoirs that have survived billions of years at more than twice Earth's insolation. On the other hand, the…
The LCO Outbursting Objects Key Project: Overview and Year 1 Status
Bannister, Michele T.; Schwamb, Megan E.; Bodewits, Dennis +32 more
The LCO Outbursting Objects Key (LOOK) Project uses the telescopes of the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) Network to (1) systematically monitor a sample of previously discovered over the whole sky, to assess the evolutionary state of these distant remnants from the early solar system, and (2) use alerts from existing sky surveys to rapidly respond t…
The Influence of Temperature and Photobleaching on Irradiated Sodium Chloride at Europa-like Conditions
Brown, Michael E.; Denman, William T. P.; Trumbo, Samantha K.
Europa's leading-hemisphere chaos regions have a spectral feature at 450 nm that has been attributed to absorption by crystal defects in irradiated sodium chloride, known as F-centers. Some discrepancies exist between the laboratory data of irradiated sodium chloride and the observations, including a ~10 nm shift in central wavelength of the F-cen…
Orbits and Occultation Opportunities of 15 TNOs Observed by New Horizons
Singer, Kelsi N.; Stern, S. Alan; Fraser, Wesley C. +10 more
We present high-precision orbits for 15 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) that have been observed by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft at distances from 0.092 to 2.2 au. We also give predictions of 66 future opportunities to observe stellar occultations by them in late 2021-2029, eight of which are possible to observe from the United States. Observation…
Topographically Influenced Evolution of Large-scale Changes in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's Imhotep Region
Soderblom, Jason M.; Bodewits, Dennis; Vincent, Jean-Baptiste +5 more
Large portions of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's northern hemisphere are blanketed by fallback material consisting of centimeter-sized particles termed the smooth terrains. Observations from the Rosetta mission show that the most drastic transient changes during 67P's 2015 perihelion passage occurred within a subset of these deposits. However, …
Dust Evolution in the Coma of Distant, Inbound Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)
Kolokolova, Ludmilla; Zhang, Qicheng; Ye, Quanzhi +1 more
C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) is an Oort Cloud comet previously observed to be active at heliocentric distances r > 20 au on what is likely its first passage through the inner solar system. We observed the comet on 2021 March 19-20 at r = 6.82 au preperihelion and 8.°35 phase angle with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and obtained high spatial resolu…
The EXCITING Experiment Exploring the Behavior of Nitrogen and Noble Gases in Interstellar Ice Analogs
Bekaert, David V.; Broadley, Michael W.; Marty, Bernard +3 more
Comets represent some of the most pristine bodies in our solar system and can provide a unique insight into the chemical makeup of the early solar system. Due to their icy volatile-rich nature, they may have played an important role in delivering volatile elements and organic material to the early Earth. Understanding how comets form can therefore…
Surface Properties of Near-Sun Asteroids
Richardson, Derek C.; Sunshine, Jessica M.; Hsieh, Henry H. +8 more
Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) with small perihelion distances reach subsolar temperatures of ≥1000 K. They are hypothesized to undergo "supercatastrophic" disruption, potentially caused by near-Sun processes such as thermal cracking, spin-up, meteoroid impacts, and subsurface volatile release, all of which are likely to cause surface alteration, whi…
Winter Weakening of Titan's Stratospheric Polar Vortices
Toigo, A. D.; Teanby, N. A.; Newman, C. E. +3 more
Polar vortices are a prominent feature in Titan's stratosphere. The Cassini mission has provided a detailed view of the breakdown of the northern polar vortex and formation of the southern vortex, but the mission did not observe the full annual cycle of the evolution of the vortices. Here we use a TitanWRF general circulation model simulation of a…
Pre- and Post-entry, Descent and Landing Assessment of the Martian Atmosphere for the Mars 2020 Rover
Kleinböhl, Armin; Mischna, Michael A.; Lewis, Stephen R. +10 more
This review provides an analysis of activities undertaken by the Mars 2020 Council of Atmospheres (CoA) in support of the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) of the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance in Jezero crater, Mars. The activities of the CoA were designed to evaluate the safety of early-stage landing site candidates and, later, to constrain the ra…