The Consortium for Planetary and Exoplanetary Science and Technology was started a few years ago to enable and grow planetary science and related education at Penn State. With respect to NASA Missions, presently, Penn State faculty are involved with the Dragonfly mission to Titan, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), and the OSIRIS-REx sample return of materials from the Asteroid Bennu. The consortium is an administrative structure consisting of six centers. The consortium has mainly focused on community building and enabling and supporting its centers.

The centers include the Astrobiology Research Center (ARC), the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds (CEHW), the Center for Space Research Programs (CSRP), the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence (PSETI) center, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium (PSGC). Notably, ARC hosts a successful weekly hybrid seminar and has established an international field school for geobiology and astrobiology. CEHW has a fabulous postdoctoral program, runs an excellent speaker series, and has hosted two symposia. Through its two national SETI workshops here in State College and a great seminar series open to all, PSETI has been leading a national effort to expand SETI work to a broader portion of the academic community and launch a modern, NASA-supported approach to the question of how abundance intelligence is in the cosmos. Across these three centers, Penn State planetary provides community for the 21 current PhDs earing our Astrobiology Dual Title.

For Dragonfly, Penn State Aerospace has been instrumental in all things related to the rotorcraft aspect of the lander (including conceptual design of rotor blades, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses, structural design, wind tunnel testing). With the mission now past its PDR, Penn State continues to contribute with CFD and structural analyses of the lander configuration. Other efforts broadly within the scope of CSRP include the recent development of a large, state-of-the-art space testing capability, as well as a new Penn State high-bay. These investments provide an outstanding foundation for planetary contributions through engineering.

This year, Penn State students are heavily involved with the national solar eclipse. This work includes a high-altitude balloon campaign. The Penn State Student Space Hardware Laboratory has designed and built a novel payload and is working with Lincoln University who also have a student developed payload.

A portion of Penn State planetary’s look to the future includes the development of future mission concepts. As mentioned, Penn State is a partner in the previus New Frontiers mission selected (Dragonfly) and Penn State led an aggressive and competitive mission proposal during the last round of the Discovery program. The next opportunity for a new mission in the NASA Planetary Science Division is New Frontiers 5 which has been delayed after recent budget projections became a challenge.

While work on future missions continues behind the scenes, our current work on OSIRIS-REx (PI Freeman) and MSL are in full swing. The OSIRIS-REx sample is safely back on Earth and aliquots are to be sent to State College in the coming months. My involvement with MSL continues with a focus on further interpretation of methane evolved from solid samples at Gale Crater, Mars. In 2022, results of TLS-SAM carbon isotopic analyses of evolved methane on 24 solid samples were published, showing a wide range in carbon isotopic values requiring at least 3 different carbon sources. Since 2022, there have also been 5 more evolved gas analyses with TLS methane measurements providing further constraints.

Astro Colloquium and 'coffee & cookies' department gathering (3:45-4:00pm)

Please join in 538 Davey or click the link to join: https://psu.zoom.us/j/93131536409