Prof. Minton Receives $1.5M in Awards

04-20-2015

Congratulations go to Dr. David Minton, EAPS professor of planetary science, on the external research awards he has received in the past year to fund 6 various research projects totaling over $1.5M. Of the 3 grants received in the past 6 month, Minton is the Co-PI on one from Arizona State University and Mount Holyoke College. Professor Minton to the PI of the largest of the grants funded by NASA.  His proposal on "Constraining lunar crater saturation by modeling GRAIL porosity" resulted in a grant totaling over a half million dollars. 

Minton and his fellow researchers are using data obtained by the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to address the fundamental question of whether saturation has occurred for a given crater size on the heavily cratered lunar highlands or not.  Specifically, they plan to employ a two-step modeling process that will use the GRAIL gravity anomaly maps and the gravity-derived porosity measurements as a tool to uncover the cumulative cratering history of the Moon over crater size ranges where cratering equilibrium may have occurred.

This is one of three grants that he has received in the past 6 months about planetary and lunar impact cratering.  We are proud of his accomplishments and look forward to the continued research breakthroughs research funding such as this affords EAPS.