University of Arizona in the News

University of Arizona Regents Professor of planetary science and cosmochemistry Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, shares stories from his new book, "The Asteroid Hunter: A Scientist's Journey to the Dawn of our Solar System."

A re-analysis of 50-year-old Apollo mission data long abandoned by NASA has identified 22,000 previously unrecognized moonquakes, almost tripling the known number of seismic lunar events. The newly discovered moonquakes show "that the moon may be more seismically and tectonically active today than we had thought," said Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a geophysicist at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the research. "It is incredible that after 50 years we are still finding new surprises in the data."

A study released last year revealed University of Arizona space sciences programs generate nearly as much money for the local economy every year as a Super Bowl. The report also sparked some friendly competition among the university's other units that regularly generate championship numbers for the local economy, including Tech Launch Arizona, the College of Health Sciences, FORGE and the university's international education programs. 

University of Arizona Indigenous resiliency specialist Michael Kotutwa Johnson discusses his farm on the Hopi Nation, about 90 minutes north of Flagstaff, where he uses a variety of techniques perfected over millennia to grow corn, squash and beans from native seeds and the processes and benefits of Indigenous Regenerative Agriculture, a culturally adapted, value-guided, holistic approach to growing crops.

Dante Lauretta, Regents Professor of planetary science and cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona, discusses the keystone to the entire OSIRIS-REx mission: the space-rock scooper called the Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism that actually obtained the sample of the asteroid Bennu. He also talks about what might be hiding inside the carbon-rich, ultra-dark asteroid samples, and what near-Earth asteroids keep him up at night.

The University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine collaborated with Make-A-Wish Arizona and PAWS Veterinary Center to help 17-year-old Tucsonan Dayson Judd, who lives with cystic fibrosis, take part in his lifelong goal of becoming a veterinarian. Judd met with the college's administration and faculty, and sat in on a class with veterinary medicine students. He also received an honorary diploma and later shadowed a veterinarian at the PAWS clinic.

The United Nations' weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization, this week issued a "red alert" about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice, and warned that the world's efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate. "This list of record-breaking events is truly shocking, although not surprising given the increase in extreme events over the past year,” said University of Arizona professor of environmental science Kathy Jacobs.

Scientists shared the first comprehensive science results from NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid-sampling mission at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, revealing the out-of-this-world makeup of asteroid Bennu.

A rare and massive comet with a devilish nickname is set to pass by Earth for the first time in 71 years and may be visible during the highly anticipated April 8 total solar eclipse, according to NASA. Eliot Herman, a retired professor at the University of Arizona and an amateur astronomer who has captured images of 12P/Pons-Brooks with a remote telescope, encourages viewers to keep an eye out for the devil comet in the coming months.

Once operational, the Giant Magellan Telescope is set to become the largest optical telescope in the world. The Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory has started fabrication of the seventh segment of the primary mirror necessary to complete the telescope.