One-page applications due Monday, September 20, 2021.

Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers:

The LPI-JSC Center for Lunar Science and Exploration, with NASA SSERVI support, developed several field training and research programs in anticipation of a new era of lunar surface exploration. The flagship program in that series is the Field Training and Research Program at Meteor Crater, which we have been operating for over a decade.

The pandemic has, unfortunately, undermined our ability to host an in-person training program at the crater. That does not diminish the need for training, however, nor our commitment to provide that training.

With that in mind, we developed a virtual training activity to be held Friday and Saturday, October 15–16, 2021. We will conduct an Extravehicular Activity (EVA) exercise at Meteor Crater to introduce graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to the geology of Meteor Crater and some of the issues that may affect Artemis astronaut EVAs on the lunar surface.

A group of students and postdocs will be selected to serve in a virtual Science Operations Center that allows them to operate from their homes or home institutions. The group will communicate with an ‘astronaut,’ in this case the course instructor, through a Science Communicator (SciCom), with the goal of maximizing the scientific return of an EVA. The EVA will be followed by a debriefing to discuss what was learned during the EVA and what could have been learned if segments of the EVA had been done differently. There will be one EVA per day, each limited to four hours. Two groups of ten students and postdocs will be selected to serve in the Science Operations Center, one group for each of the two EVAs.

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who want to participate in this activity should submit a  one-page application with 12 pt font and the following information:

• Name, institution, and status (MSc student, Ph.D. student, or Postdoctoral Researcher)
• Email address
• Name of research supervisor
• One sentence description of field geology experience; if none, write “None”
• One sentence description of research experience with impact craters; if none, write “None”
• One sentence description of experience with lunar samples; if none, write “None”
• One paragraph that explains your interest in the training program

Please email that single page to Ms. Delia Enriquez at [email protected].

Selected students will be notified on September 27, 2021.

The instructor is Dr. David Kring, Principal Investigator of the Center for Lunar Science and Exploration at the LPI and senior science advisor at Barringer Meteorite Crater (aka Meteor Crater).