The Centre for Planetary Sciences at UCL/Birkbeck

Professor Ian Crawford, Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology, Birkbeck, University of London, will deliver his Inaugural Lecture on Tuesday 4 June 2013 starting at 5pm in B01, Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.

Dr Geraint Jones (UCL Space and Climate Physics) has been selected to exhibit at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition from Tuesday 2 July to Sunday 7 July 2013. His subject is Ice Worlds: The Solid Bodies of the Outer Solar System. It is a highly competitive process and only 1 in 5 are selected. The exhibition is the Society’s most prestigious event of the year and dates back to their Soirees founded in around 1778. Entry is free.

A second edition of Planetary Geology: An Introduction book will be published by Dunedin Academic Press at the end of June 2013. The book is co-authored by former UCL Professor Claudio Vita-Finzi and by current UCL/Birkbeck lecturer, and CPS member, Dr Dominic Fortes.

The CPS Summer Meeting will be held on Monday 24 June in the Wilkins Old Refectory.

The deadline for talk/poster abstracts for the CPS Summer Meeting is Monday 27 May 2013. Please email these to Jo Fabbri (jfabbri at star.ucl.ac.uk) - maximum of half an A4 page (plain text or PDF format preferred). Talks will be approximately 15-20 mins long (TBC).

Prof. Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni will be talking at the RAS lunchtime lectures on Wednesday 29 May 2013 from 13.00-14.00 on the subject: "Of how planetary interiors shape their outer surfaces".

At the RAS Ordinary Meeting this Friday Professor David Southwood will deliver the Presidential address on:  Saturn's Mysterious Magnetism.

The Exoplanet journal club has been established by the Exoplanet and Exomol groups within the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Prof. Ian Crawford (CPS, Birkbeck) has been awarded a grant of £99,318 by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to identify the source localities of lunar meteorites. This study will combine spacecraft remote sensing observations of the Moon with laboratory analyses of lunar meteorites. The grant will fund a PhD studentship starting in April 2013.

The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer mission (JUICE) will study Jupiter and its large, ice/ocean-bearing moons. JUICE is planned to launch in 2022 and arrive in 2030. Dr Nick Achilleos (CPS / UCL Astrophysics) is part of the J-MAG Consortium, an international team of investigators who have successfully proposed one of the 11 scientific experiments to be flown on board this mission.

The Natural Environment Research Council have featured a news article on astrobiology work in Iceland carried out by CPS members on their 'Planet Earth Online' website. The article is based on a paper in press with the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, led by Dr Claire Cousins, entitled "Glaciovolcanic hydrothermal environments in Iceland and implications for their detection on Mars".