This June, Dolores Hill, co-lead of the OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroids! program, was honored as a White House Champion of Change for her "dedication to increasing public engagement in science and science literacy." Throu

LPL is excited to welcome two new faculty members starting Fall 2013—Drs. Travis Barman and Walt Harris both joined the LPL faculty as associate professors. Travis and Walt bring diverse and unique strengths to LPL and we look forward to many productive collaborations.

The theme of this year's Summer Science Saturday was Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite! The day-long event, held on July 20, featured great kids activities like making paper rockets and planispheres, building volcanoes (like those on Io), and learning about physics, spectroscopy, robots, rockets, and so much more. The OSIRIS-Rex Ambassadors helped to cool off the crowd with asteroid ice cream, handmade by each guest.

Just in time for the fall LPL newsletter—thanks for the wayback machine, Cliff Stoll (LPL class of 1980)!

It's retro rocket time inside my attic. I came across a couple photos of the first graduate students from the Dept. of Planetary Sciences. Just scanned 'em in. These were all the grad students in 1976. Gerard Kuiper admitted the first grad students in 1973, so none of us had yet finished grad school. The crazies included Chris Benner, Bob West, Bob Howell, Bruce Cordell, Martha Leake, Guy Consolmagno, Cliff Stoll, Jon Gradie, Kevin Housen, Wayne Slattery, and Carl Allen.

With regret, we forward the news that two long-time LPL staffers recently passed away.

Sam Clapp died on August 26, 2013. Sam was a project manager who worked on numerous spaceflight missions at LPL.

Ron James was an instrument maker/designer for LPL and Steward. He also passed away in August 2013.

LPL extends sincere condolences to the family and friends of Sam and Ron.