The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
A month until LPSC
Feb. 13, 2006 | 12:20 PST | 20:20 UTC
What is LPSC, you ask? It's the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, held once a year by the Lunar and Planetary Institute at Johnson Space Center in Houston. LPSC is one of the big meetings of planetary scientists that are held each year, where they gather to give presentations to each other on their latest work, see what else is going on in the field, and, of course, just have fun get-togethers in the evenings (you haven't lived until you've seen a bunch of planetary scientists shakin' it on the dance floor of a smoky bar playing music from the '70s and '80s). LPSC is particularly focused on planetary geology, so you won't see much in the way of astronomy or giant planet atmospheres and magnetic fields stuff, but that leaves plenty of room for session after session on the surfaces of the terrestrial planets, icy moons, and little rocky bodies that populate the solar system. Since my training is in geology, it's the one meeting I've been going to every year since I entered the field in 1998.
The final program came out for the meeting a week or two ago. Unlike the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting that I attended last year (click here to read all my blog entries from that run together), which had only two concurrent sessions to choose from, LPSC always runs four at once, which leads to some tough choices. This year it's going to be particularly tough, especially on Wednesday afternoon when there will be concurrent sessions featuring the latest results from the rovers, from Cassini's looks at the satellites and rings of Saturn, and from Deep Impact. Ouch. If you have any advice to offer on my dilemma (or want to ask to make sure I go to specific sessions and report on them -- I'll do it if I can), check out the LPSC program for yourself (it's a PDF document, and you can click on any of the session titles or talk titles to take you to further information).
Two of the most interesting sessions will undoubtedly be the first results from analysis of Stardust's returned samples and the first meeting I've been to with results from Hayabusa. (Both of those links take you to PDF documents.) There are several figures in the Hayabusa papers being presented that I haven't seen before; it looks like they have a lot of really good science results to present. (It's rumored that there should be a special Hayabusa issue of Science coming out at some point.) One thing that will help in deciphering all these figures is this handy map showing all of the place names that the researchers have been using to identify spots on Itokawa, which was assembled by planetary cartographer Phil Stooke. Unofficial place names on ItokawaA compilation by planetary cartographer Phil Stooke of all of the publicly announced feature names on the tiny asteroid Itokawa as of Feburary 11, 2006, using base images captured by Hayabusa. Credit: ISAS / JAXA / map and montage by Phil Stooke |
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