Erik Asphaug
Professor, Planetary Sciences
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Professor, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
Gerard P. Kuiper Space Sci., 431
Erik Asphaug was born in 1961 in Oslo. He grew up in various parts of the US and Norway. He majored in English and Math at Rice University, and then taught high school in Minneapolis and Tucson. He started graduate studies at LPL in 1988 and has been a planetary scientist ever since. In 1998 he was awarded the Urey Prize of the AAS/DPS, and asteroid 7939 Asphaug is named for his research on comet geophysics and planetary impacts. His first faculty appointment was in Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, where he helped create the Planetary Sciences program and became Full Professor in 2006. In 2012 he became Ronald Greeley Chair of Planetary Science at Arizona State University. In 2017 he returned to Tucson and joined the faculty of LPL.
Research Interest
I study giant impacts that dominate the late stage of planet and satellite formation, such as that which formed the Moon, that can explain why planets are so diverse and sometimes hemispherically dichotomous. I also study the geophysics of asteroids, comets and small moons, the 'small bodies' left over from accretion. I study the strength properties of meteorites and the origin of chondrules. Motivated students have led me to study other topics such as lakes and patterned ground on Mars, the delivery of volatiles to the lunar surface, and Saturn's rings. I am on the science team of NASA's Psyche mission, and ESA's Hera mission to Didymos, and JAXA's MMX mission to the Martian moons. I am Science PI of the SpaceTREx laboratory at U Arizona that is advancing miniaturized space exploration and small cubesat laboratories for low-gravity research.
Offering Research Opportunities
Yes
Prerequisite Courses
Vector calculus, two years of physics, proficiency in computer programming, demonstrated proficiency at writing
Majors Considered
Any science or engineering related major
Description of Opportunity
No description given
