University of Arizona in the News

Two long-time University of Arizona astronomers are awaiting the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. The mission is designed to help scientists look deeper into the universe than ever before. Researchers George and Marcia Rieke talk about how they became involved in designing two of the experiments being carried by the spacecraft.

The OSIRIS-REX spacecraft is on its way back to Earth, having tagged the surface of asteroid Bennu last year to scoop up samples. It will arrive home in 2023, ejecting a capsule full of samples that may help eager scientists decipher the origin of Earth’s water and life. But the spacecraft will have plenty of fuel left. Its mission team wondered: Could it go somewhere else? Yes, it turns out. And not just anywhere, but one of the most famous near-Earth asteroids: Apophis.

"You work for years and it all goes up in a puff of smoke," said Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona. Rieke admits her fingers will be crossed on the morning of Dec. 22 when she tunes in for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. For 20 years, she has been working to design and build an ultrasensitive infrared camera that will live aboard the spacecraft. The Webb is the vaunted bigger and more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA will launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space observatory in history and the world's biggest science project. University of Arizona astronomer Kevin Hainline of the James Webb Space Telescope science team produced a video to explain the mission's significance.

The University of Arizona women's basketball team achieved another historical milestone under Adia Barnes when the Wildcats checked in at No. 4 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 poll. The Wildcats' latest position in the AP poll is the highest regular-season ranking in program history. UArizona and Baylor are the only two schools to have both men's and women's basketball programs ranked in the Top 10.

Experts say wilder winds are altering currents, the sea is releasing carbon dioxide and that ice is melting from below. "From no perspective is there any place more important than the Southern Ocean," said Joellen L. Russell, an oceanographer at the University of Arizona. "There’s nothing like it on Planet Earth."

Comet C/2021 A1 Leonard will pass by Earth next month on its first visit in about 70,000 years. The comet was discovered on Jan. 3 by University of Arizona planetary sciences senior researcher Gregory Leonard at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter Observatory.

Soon, NASA will launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space observatory in history and the world's biggest science project. An explainer video written and starring University of Arizona astronomer Kevin Hainline helps explain the project's significance.

This review of Netflix's new movie, "Don't Look Up" includes an interview with University of Arizona astronomer and professor of planetary science Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Neowise) mission, who served as scientific adviser on the film. "My position is we should be going out and looking for these objects. Just go out and look, and either you find one that's headed your way, or you don't.

Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, most scientists believe the virus emerged in the wild and jumped from bats 3to humans, either directly or through another animal. Others theorize it escaped from a Chinese lab. Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona last month published a COVID-19 timeline linking the first known human case to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were sold. "The lab leak idea is almost certainly a huge distraction that’s taking focus away from what actually happened," he said.