Past Science Seminars
April 17, 2025
The Forward Contamination of Mars: Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Scot Rafkin
(SwRI, Boulder)
The possibility of indigenous life on Mars, either past or present, is a persistent theme that permeates literature, popular culture, and, of course, the exploration of Mars itself. Whether seeking organics, biomarkers, or organisms, scientific integrity...
April 10, 2025
The thermosphere and the dynamic processes driving the thermospheric responses to major geomagnetic storms
Wenbin Wang
(NCAR/HAO)
The thermosphere is an atmospheric region from ~100 km to ~1000 km produced by the atmospheric absorption of solar UV and EUV radiation. It is the region where atmospheric species is not well mixed but diffuses...
April 3, 2025
Exploring the activity across cool stars using sub-terahertz imaging tomography
Atul Mohan
(GSFC)
Stellar activity drives space weather, influencing planetary atmospheres and habitability. The Sun is the only known star to host a biosphere, though in general cool main-sequence stars (F – M type) host the majority of Earth-like...
March 20, 2025
Atmospheric escape from Mars and Venus: recent advancements and new mysteries
Eryn Cangi
(LASP, CU)
Though dry and inhospitable to life as we know it today, Mars once hosted substantial surface liquid water, and Venus may have as well. Over time, much of the water from both planets has effectively been...
March 13, 2025
Perspectives on Climate and Science Policy from DC and Beyond: Lessons Learned at the AMS Climate Policy Colloquium
Matt Watwood
(LASP)
“Working in policy” is a phrase we hear tossed around, but what does that really entail? What are the professional roles that exist in science policy? What is it like working on climate policy in the...
March 6, 2025
A Glimpse at the Near Future of Helio- and Stellar Physics
James Mason
(Johns Hopkins APL)
There are a lot of really cool near-future (and recent) heliophysics missions launching. Similarly, recent and upcoming tools – especially in AI – are improving at a mind-boggling rate. Prospects for collaborations between heliophysics, planetary science,...
February 27, 2025
What to expect next from NASA’s TESS Mission
Allison Youngblood
(GSFC)
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is NASA’s wide-field optical astrophysical observatory exploring the bright and time-variable sky. Since its launch in 2018, TESS has discovered over 500 confirmed exoplanets and over 6000 additional candidates await...
February 13, 2025
Observations of The Interplay Between Waves, Magnetic Reconnection and Turbulence in Space Plasmas
Victoria (Tori) Wilder
(University of Texas at Arlington)
Most of the observable matter in the universe is plasma, and therefore understanding its behavior is important for a variety of space, astrophysical and laboratory applications. An active topic of research in recent years has been...
February 6, 2025
Satellite Remote Sensing of Clouds in Three Dimensions
Hong Chen
(LASP)
Clouds have long represented a significant source of uncertainty in the estimation of the Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) from space- or airborne imagery observations. In passive cloud remote sensing, three-dimensional (3D) cloud structures observed in nature...
January 30, 2025
NASA Funding, Politics, and the U.S. Federal Budget Process
Johannes Loschnigg
(GHGSat)
Ever wondered how the US Federal budget gets developed, and how this impacts NASA funding? How certain programs or missions get cut and then later come back to life? What you can do when your particular...
January 23, 2025
Experimentally replicating hypervelocity ice grain sampling during a planetary flyby using laboratory impact ionization mass spectrometry
Marshall Seaton
(JPL, NASA )
Impact ionization mass spectrometers, historically referred to as dust analyzers, have played a crucial role in planetary science mission investigations in recent decades, and will continue to do so for decades to come. Perhaps most notably,...
January 16, 2025
Earth-Based Transmitters Trigger Precipitation of Inner Radiation Belt Electrons: Unveiling Observations and Modeling Results
Zheng Xiang
(LASP)
Human activity influences Earth’s environment, including the space environment hundreds to thousands of kilometers above the Earth. One direct evidence is that the 19.8 kHz electromagnetic signals launched by the North West Cape (NWC) transmitter station...
December 5, 2024
The Role of the Polar Vortex in Sun-Earth Coupling
Lynn Harvey
(LASP)
In the polar regions, the wintertime polar vortices play a critical role in both “bottom-up” atmospheric coupling via its modulation of planetary and gravity waves as well as “top-down” coupling via the transport of nitrogen oxides...
November 21, 2024
Solar wind-magnetosphere coupling and planetary ion escape in Mercury’s magnetosphere
Weijie Sun
(Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley)
Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, which possesses a global intrinsic magnetic field that interacts with the solar wind to form a small magnetosphere. Unlike other planets in the solar system, Mercury lacks a...
November 7, 2024
The importance of boundaries - large-scale solar wind-magnetosphere coupling
Brian Walsh
(Boston University)
The dynamics inside planetary magnetosphere’s are driven, in most cases, by coupling between a planetary environment and a stellar wind. At Earth, solar wind-magnetosphere coupling has been the focus of study for decades. Although recent space...
October 24, 2024
Old and New – Solar Coronal CubeSat Missions at LASP
Bennet Schwab
(LASP)
The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is the only academic institution with a 100% mission success return on their CubeSats. Science missions directed at studying the solar corona have been a large majority of...
October 10, 2024
Multi-wavelength monitoring of space weather from young, solar-type stars
Ivey Davis
(Caltech)
Space weather involves studying both the radiation from events like flares as well as the particles accelerated in the form of stellar energetic particle (SEP) events and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Each of these components is...
October 3, 2024
Impact of Assimilating Ionosphere and Thermosphere Observations in a Whole Atmosphere Model
Nicholas Pedatella
(NCAR / HAO)
Though widely used in the lower atmosphere for both operational and scientific purposes, data assimilation techniques have yet to be extensively adopted in the mesosphere, thermosphere, and ionosphere. This is despite the inherent benefits obtained by...
September 19, 2024
The LAPYUTA mission: Life-environmentology, Astronomy, and PlanetarY Ultraviolet Telescope Assembly
Fuminori Tsuchiya
(Tohoku University)
Ultraviolet spectroscopy is one of the most powerful tools to cover a wide range of scientific fields, from planetary science to astronomy. We will introduce a future UV space telescope, LAPYUTA which is selected as a...
September 12, 2024
Detectability and chemistry of hydrocarbons in interstellar and planetary environments
Jordy Bouwman
(LASP, CU)
Hydrocarbons of all sorts and sizes are found throughout the various stages of star and planet formation. For example, from infrared spectroscopic observations we have learned that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous in space. The...