Our group is in the Planetary Science research area of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University.  We study the large, solid, rocky and icy worlds across our Solar System through their geophysics and surfaces.  Our work uses data returned by NASA robotic spacecraft missions and numerical simulations.  If these topics interest you as a potential graduate or undergraduate student researcher, please e-mail us to talk about planetary science at Purdue!

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Below are links to our published studies, organized by planet.  Entries in bold italics are papers that are first-authored by someone in our group.  Research descriptions can also be found on the Research and CV/Publication tabs.

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• Lunar megaregolith structure revealed by GRAIL gravity data

• Isostatic compensation of the lunar highlands

• Gravitational search for cryptovolcanism on the Moon: Evidence for large volumes of early igneous activity

• Summary of the results from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter after seven years in lunar orbit

• The fractured Moon: Production and saturation of porosity in the lunar highlands from impact cratering

• Lunar impact basins revealed by Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory Measurements

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• A thin, dense crust for Mercury

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• Orbital forcing of Martian climate revealed in a south polar outlier ice deposit

• Water on Mars, with a grain of salt: Local heat anomalies are required for basal melting of ice at the south pole today

• Islands of ice on Mars and Pluto

• Viscous flow rates of icy topography on the north polar layered deposits of Mars

• A procedure for testing the significance of orbital tuning of the Martian polar layered deposits

• Special issue introduction, Mars polar science

• The stability of a liquid-water body below the south polar cap of Mars

• Episodes of aqueous flooding and volcanism from geologically recent outflow channels on Mars

• Signals of astronomical forcing in the exposure topography of Mars' north polar deposits

• Timescales of the  climate record in the south polar ice cap of Mars

• Stratigraphy of the north polar layered deposits of Mars using high-resoltuion topography

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• Reexamining the potential to classify lava flows from the fractality of their margins

• Lava-rise plateaus and inflation pits within the McCartys flow field, New Mexico: An analog for pāhoehoe-like lava flows on planetary surfaces

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• A Wunda-full worlds? Carbon dioxide ice deposits on Umbriel and other Uranian moons

• A CO2 cycle on Ariel? Radiolytic production and migration to low latitude cold traps

• The science case for spacecraft exploration of the Uranian satellites: Candidate ocean worlds in an ice giant system

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• Porosity evolution in metallic asteroids: Implications for the original and thermal history of asteroid 16 Psyche

• Ferrovolcanism on metal worlds and the origin of pallasites

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• Can Triton's internal heat be inferred from its ice cap?

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• Endogenically sourced volatiles on Charon and other Kuiper Belt Objects

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• The origin of mascons on Ceres as constrained by crater morphology

• Cryovolcanic rates on Ceres revealed by topography

• The vanishing cryovolcanoes of Ceres

• Science drivers for exploration of Ceres: From Solar System evolution to ocean world science

• Concepts for the future exploration of dwarf planet Ceres' habitability

• Landslide morphology and mobility on Ceres controlled by topography

• Evidence of non-uniform crust of Ceres from Dawn's high-resolution gravity data

• The varied sources of faculae-forming brines in Ceres' Occator crater emplaced via hydrothermal brine effusion

• Dome formation on Ceres by solid-state flow analogous to terrestrial salt tectonics tectonics

• Bright carbonate surfaces on Ceres as remnants of salt-rich water fountains

• A global inventory of ice-related morphological features on dwarf planet Ceres: Implications for the evolution and current state of the cryosphere