Science & Technology

Kun Wang, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received a $506,053 grant from the NASA Emerging Worlds program for his project, “Experimental Studies of Volatile Fractionation in the Early Solar System.”

Physicists in Arts & Sciences, including Brian Rauch, are part of a team funded by NASA to develop the concept for the most sensitive survey of cosmic ultra-high energy neutrinos ever conducted. 

The Chinese space agency announced Dec. 16 the return of a lunar probe bringing back the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years. Bradley L. Jolliff, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, reflects on the scientific value of the samples.

Bill McKinnon, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, is one of 62 geoscientists who have been elected to the American Geophysical Union’s 2020 class of fellows.

Dust-related electrochemistry can reshape Martian surface materials with physical and chemical changes observable after only hundreds of years. Similar electrical effects may be instrumental on Venus and Europa, according to new work from Alian Wang in Arts & Sciences.

A new electrolysis system that makes use of briny water could provide astronauts on Mars with life-supporting oxygen and fuel for the ride home, according to engineers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, who developed the system.

Researchers from physics and chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis leveraged data from nuclear scattering experiments to make stringent constraints on how neutrons and protons arrange themselves in the nucleus. Their predictions are tightly connected to how large neutron stars grow and what elements are likely synthesized in neutron star mergers.

A new study finds that Earth’s water may have come from materials that were present in the inner solar system at the time the planet formed — instead of that water being delivered by far-reaching comets or asteroids. The research co-authored by physicist Lionel Vacher in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis is published Aug. 28 in Science.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis planetary scientists shows that Martian dust storms, like the one that eventually shut down the Opportunity rover, drive the cycle of chlorine from surface to atmosphere and may shed light on the potential for finding life on Mars.

On May 30, 2020, WashU alumnus Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first astronauts in NASA’s history to launch from a commercially built and operated spacecraft, the SpaceX Crew Dragon. For the Demo-2 mission, the two are testing the spacecraft’s transportation system for future missions.