The first articles to be published in The Planetary Science Journal (PSJ) are now online! Launched late last year by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and its Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS), PSJ is an open-access journal devoted to recent developments, discoveries, and theories relevant to the investigation of both our solar system and other planetary systems. PSJ publishes manuscripts reporting significant new observational results, theoretical insights, computational modeling, laboratory experiments, innovations in instrumentation, and field work in the planetary sciences.
PSJ’s Editor is Faith Vilas (Planetary Science Institute). She is supported by three Science Editors: Brian Jackson (Boise State University), Edgard G. Rivera-Valentin (Lunar and Planetary Institute, Universities Space Research Association), and Maria Womack (University of Central Florida).
The first article to appear online is an editorial by Vilas, DPS Publications Subcommittee chair Ross Beyer, and AAS Editor in Chief Ethan Vishniac describing the motivation for launching the new journal and the services PSJ will provide to the scientific community. Next are six articles covering a wide range of objects from Mercury to Jupiter and an equally wide range of phenomena from formation of the lunar regolith to the interplanetary transfer of material from asteroids to Earth.
The first issue begins with 6 articles from analyzing Mercury’s iron core, modeling the lunar surface, and investigating the effects of a spacecraft impacting an asteroid, as well as several other developments, discoveries, and theories in planetary science.