RESEARCH
Use your mouse to move each planetary body, Hover over each planetary body's name to learn more.
Pluto
Pluto is currently classified as a dwarf planet by the IAU, and it is the largest dwarf planet in the Solar System followed by Eris. The first surface images that revealed Pluto's young surface were taken by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. When these images were shared, I was in my sophomore year at the University of Maryland, and I knew at that point I wanted to study this mysterious body. The feature that stood out to me and most was the "heart of Pluto" or formerly known as the Tombaugh Regio. The tear dropped shape on the left side is the basin called Sputnik Planitia. Noticeably there is a lack of craters inside the basin, indicating this feature's surface is very young which is surprising that such a distant object has experienced resurfacing. The questions to ask next was how did this feature form and its evolution through time, and these questions became the basis of my senior thesis. The two leading hypotheses for the formation of the basin is a giant impact (Moore et al., 2016), a natural accumulation of ice at the latitude of Sputnik Planitia from the runaway albedo effect (Hamilton et al., 2016), or perhaps a combination of the two. I decided to test if there is any evidence of flexure in the area surrounding Sputnik Planitia if Sputnik Planitia acted as a load due to the accumulation of ice. I also measured the size of such a cap that would produce the flexure signal. These results have been presented at AGU 2018 and LPSC 2019, and they are in preparation for a publication. Once published I will share more.
Europa
Europa is a Galilean moon of Jupiter, and it is the sixth largest moon of the Solar system, following our own moon. Like Sputnik Planitia on Pluto, Europa's surface is younger as show by its' lack of many craters globally. Europa's surface is very interesting that double ridges and band dominate the terrain, indicating the effect of tectonics on the moon. The activity on Europa is strongly influenced by the tidal action attributed to Europa being in a 1:2:4 Laplance resonance with Io and Ganymede. Another interesting feature of Europa and the other Galilean moons is the existence of an underlying ocean under the crust. For Europa, this ocean is similar to our own in that it is primarily a salty water mix. We believe that some material from the oceans can be transported to the surface through volcanism which is cryovolcanism on Europa. The candidates for cryovolcanism on Europa are distributed throughout Europa which have been mapped by Noviello et al., 2019, but I have also worked on understanding their physical attributes (in prep). The mechanism at which the icy slurries arrive to the surface is debated and not well understood, but it may be related to the tidal action that Europa experiences. We will learn more about Europa and the role of cryovolcanism with the upcoming Europa Clipper mission.
Ganymede
Ganymede is a Galilean moon of Jupiter, and it is the largest moon of the Solar system at 2634 km in radius, making it slightly larger than Mercury. Ganymede is the only moon to have an intrinsic magnetic field, meaning it creates its own magnetic field. Ganymede most likely creates its' magnetic field through a dynamo. A lot is unknown about Ganymede's magnetic field since there were only 8 flybys around the moon, and much of the data were taken at high altitudes and in predominantly the northern hemisphere. To characterize magnetic fields of planetary bodies, you typically need to have good global coverage at low altitudes. Since the early 2000s, the magnetic field of Ganymede hasn't been revisited by many, so I decided that with improved methods that can use spatially limited data, that I would tackle questions that we still have. I will update this section once I have results and presented them.
Europa
Stayed tuned. Update coming soon on dissertation work and chaotic terrain work at NASA JPL and GSFC. Website under reconstruction so please visit my Google Scholar for immediate updates.
All images were obtained from NASA. Background image was compiled by Ted Stryk and modified by Alyssa C. Mills