Several Space Studies on-campus students attended the Lunar and Planetary Science Institute’s annual conference in Houston held in mid-March. The students were: Nicole Thom, Brad Schanche, Josh Berk, Marissa Saad, Rachael Roberts, Caitlin Nolby and Jessica Blagen. Thom gave a poster presentation on “Atmospheric Mass Loss and Orbital Evolution of Exoplanets.” Blagen gave a poster presentation on “Testing the Gefion Family as a Possible Parent body for the L-Chondrite Meteorites.” Jeremy  Straub, although he did not attend the conference, had a poster presentation on “NEOSat: An Architecture for Small Interplanetary Craft Development.” Kurt Holmer, a Space Studies distance student, gave a poster presentation on “An Overview of the Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD) Program: NASA’s Next Steps to Extending Public/Private Partnerships Beyond Earth Orbit.”

Pablo de Leon, senior research associate in Space Studies, and Jon Rask, senior scientist at Ames Research Center, had a poster presentation at the Lunar and Planetary Science Institute’ annual meeting in Houston held in mid-March. The title of the poster was “The Exploration of Marambio Antarctica as a Mars Analog.”