Friday, July 17, 2026

New and exciting activities in the
McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences

Recent News From McDonnell Center Fellows

Curiosity Sees Martian Sulfur Up Close

Tectonic movements are instrumental in rocky coastal erosion

Cesar Lopez and Claire Masteller studied how geological forces influence coastline erosion over decades along the wave-battered rocky bluffs of the US West Coast. They assessed the individual and joint contributions of tectonic uplift, wave energy, rock strength and tides in coastal erosion and shoreline retreat.

MCSS Hosts Lunch and Trivia for Summer Researchers

First Place Team

Second Place Team

MCSS Fellows in the News

Cosmic Conjoined Twins, Caught on Camera
Paul Byrne | New York TImes

A Mars rover found organic carbon just sitting on a rock
Paul Byrne | ScienceNews

Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself.
Paul Byrne | Quanta Magazine

Recent Publications by McDonnell Center Fellows

Mikušincová, R., Krawczynski, H., et al. (2026). Super-Eddington accretion geometry: a remarkable stability of the hidden ultraluminous X-Ray source Cygnus X-3. The Astrophysical Journal, 1005(1), 83. 

Moreland, E. L., VanBommel, S. J., et al. (2026). Alteration of a Mantle‐Derived Dunite Boulder in Jezero Crater, Mars. Geophysical Research Letters, 53(13). 

Whitsett, N., & Daylan, T. (2026). Planet-induced Stellar Flare Candidates from the TESS Mission. The Astrophysical Journal, 1005(1), 43. 

Iqbal, W., Jolliff, B., et al. (2026). Geological mapping of the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin region of the Moon. Icarus, 459, 117234. 

Deligny, C., Jolliff, B. L., et al. (2026). Impact provenance and age of a unique basalt found in Apollo 12 regolith. Meteoritics and Planetary Science. 

Hu, K., Fritts, M., Zhou, F., Chun, S., Detoito, A. G., Gau, E.,Braun, D., Radomski, D., Cavero, N. R., Menon, S., Krawczynski, H., et al. (2026). Design of a mission to measure the shape and substructure of the 511 keV γ-ray line from the center of the Milky Way. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and Systems, 12(02). 

Billings, K., & Skemer, P. (2026c). From a sample to the mantle: Analyzing CPO, quantifying uncertainty, and modeling seismic anisotropy. Journal of Structural Geology, 210, 105740. 

Caplan, C. E., & Gillis, J. J. (2026). Detection of Simulated Space Weathering on Electron Irradiated Water-Ice Coated Silicon Using AFM-IR, SEM, and S/TEM Techniques. ACS Earth and Spce Chemistry. 

Bishop, J., Charity, R. J., Dronchi, N., Sobotka, L.G., et al. (2026). Differential cross sections for ¹²C(n,  α₀), ¹⁶O(n, α₀) and ¹⁶O(n, α_1,2,3) between E_n = 7.2 and 10 MeV with an active-target time projection chamber. Journal of Physics G Nuclear and Particle Physics, 53(6), 065107. 

Hong, J., Zu, C., et al. (2026). Direct Visualization of Canted Magnetization and Topological Charges in Self-Intercalated van der Waals Magnet Cr₁+_δTe₂ with Hidden Structural Phases. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. 

Vaci, Z., Tian, Z., Koefoed, P., Wang, K., et al. (2026). Potassium isotopic compositions and exposure ages of evolved and silica‐rich achondrites. Meteoritics and Planetary Science. 

Planetary Thermal Emission
in the Age of Roman

St. Louis Astronomical Society July Meeting
Zifan Lin
McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow, WashU
Friday, July 17
7:30pm, McDonnell 162

Summer Undergraduate
Research Poster Session

Hosted by the Department of Physics
Undergraduate students conducting summer research in Physics & EEPS are invited to participate
Thursday, August 6
11:00am - 1:00pm, Compton 340

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Interim Director: William McKinnon
Associate Director: Michael Nowak
Assistant to the Director: Vickie Gee
Communications Specialist: Alison Verbeck

Compiled and edited by Alison Verbeck. Please send any contributions to alison@wustl.edu.

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