Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
The Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) is sponsoring the 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). This year’s meeting will highlight NASA’s renewed emphasis on lunar activities.

Special sessions will focus on the current state
of lunar knowledge, new and current missions to the Moon, and lunar network science.

LPSC will also feature Dr. Michael Griffin, NASA’s current Administrator, as the Monday evening keynote speaker.

The lunar focus for the 39th LPSC is especially timely in light of its coincidence with the LPI’s 40th anniversary. The Institute was established in 1968 during the Apollo missions to create a new lunar and planetary science community, and over the past four decades has served as an international leader and focal point for what is now a diverse and thriving community. We are pleased to celebrate this important milestone with the community as we look forward to NASA’s return to the Moon.

LPSC will be held March 10–14, 2008, at the South Shore Harbor Resort and Conference Center in League City, Texas. This conference brings together international specialists in petrology, geochemistry, geophysics, geology, and astronomy to present the latest results of research in lunar and planetary science.

Please click on the QuickTime (QT) links below to view some video clips featuring Genesis scientists discussing their work with the Genesis mission at last year's conference .

LPSC 2006
			Don Burnett, Principal Investigator of the Genesis mission, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California talks about obtaining precise measures of solar isotopic abundances for scientists to better understand the isotopic variations in meteorites, comets, lunar samples, and planetary atmospheres and to provide a reservoir of solar matter for 21st century science research. QT, 2 MB (1:10 min.)
			Veronika Heber, Institute of Isotope Geochemistry & Mineral Resources at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, describes her work with measuring Genesis solar wind samples and analyzing the concentrator target, which will provide oxygen isotopic composition of the solar wind and enable us to draw conclusions about the composition of the sun. Before extracting solar wind from the target, fractionation, or a separation process where the quantity of isotopes is divided up in a large number of smaller quantities based on differences in a specific property, is performed using a baseline of the composition. QT, 4 MB (2:21 min.)
			Melissa Rodriguez, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, explains her curation team’s study, “Cleaning Genesis Solar Wind Collectors with Ultrapure Water: Residual Contaminant Particle Analysis” and talks about her opportunity to work with the curation process of the Genesis samples—handling samples that have not been touched since they came back from Utah. By using software to particle mapping and a plotting study to determine which areas have or have not been cleaned successfully by the Ultrapure Water Cleaning process, scientists are able to have virtually particle-free samples to study for their processes. She also describes the wafer spinner, currently being developed to clean samples, which will secure wafers with suction for application of megasonic flow to be spun at 3000 rpm. QT, 5.8 MB (3:21 min.)
			Mike Pellin, Genesis Design Team at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in Chicago, Illinois, is currently investigating trace elements and isotopes in silicon wafers using the SARISA (Surface Analysis by Resonance Ionization of Sputtered Atoms). In this clip, Mike talks about his work on the Genesis design team which has produced a highly-effective technique for successfully measuring the elements with higher precision. By measuring element by element, he hopes to provide new understanding to the systematic differences between the solar wind theories—what people thought was in the solar wind to what actually is in the solar wind—to how the universe is evolving, and how we might expect it to evolve in the future. QT, 5.5 MB (3:13 min.)
			Eileen Stansbery, Deputy Director of Astro Materials Research and Exploration Science at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston Texas, talks about what intrigued her about the Genesis mission as well as her work with curation planning, contamination control, cleaning studies and assessments to determine what kinds of particle contamination—Utah dirt, spacecraft parts, crushed samples, molecular haze from inflight—and how they affect the scientific results of the mission. QT, 4.7 MB (2:43 min.)