13th Planetary Crater Consortium Meeting

13th Planetary Crater Consortium Meeting

The annual 13th Planetary Crater Consortium (PCC) Meeting was held as a hybrid meeting from Wednesday through Friday, August 10–12, 2022. The meeting was convened by the Planetary Crater Consortium, with logistics shared between the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), and Ursinus College. A total of 126 individuals were registered, with more than 48 active participants at any given time (including up to 23 in-person) spanning time zones from central Europe to Hawai‘i.

The PCC annual meeting is open to all planetary and terrestrial scientists interested in any aspect of impact cratering on solar system bodies, including observational, theoretical, experimental, and numerical modeling studies of impact craters on planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, comets, or other small solar system objects. The annual meeting is designed to encourage and provide adequate time for an in-depth discussion of crater-related issues and research topics to enhance collaborations. A primary goal of the meeting is to provide feedback on works in progress in a relaxed and friendly environment, discuss potential new avenues of collaborative crater research, and present new work and applications of impact crater studies and related topics. As such, most talks had longer, 30-minute slots, and discussion times were set aside in the schedule every day.

The scientific program consisted of 22 talks spanning five different topical sessions: Lunar craters, martian craters, laboratory and modeling experiments, lightning session, and icy bodies. The new lightning session — introduced last year — was designed to give some speakers shorter talks while still fitting them into the schedule, and it continued to be well received. For more information about the meeting, including the program and abstracts, visit the meeting website at https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/crater2022/.

Under the PCC Charter, the PCC annual meeting also contains several business items, including committee reports and the election of a new PCC Council member (Veronica Bray, University of Arizona) to replace one of three who rotate off each year (this year, Jamie D. Riggs, Thomas Jefferson University). The PCC Executive Council agreed to extend the previous year’s documentarian by one year (Rachael H. Hoover, SwRI). The role of the non-voting documentarian is to provide documentation of PCC meetings and Executive Council meetings, and to give an early-career person (typically pre-Ph.D.) experience being in the leadership of a professional society.

The annual PCC meeting was a success, thanks to the hard work of the conveners, the organizers, and hosts, and we look forward to the 14th meeting. As of the time of this writing (February 2023), we have confirmed that our 14th PCC meeting will return to our original home at the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, in August 2023. It will have a hybrid/virtual component as well.

In-person attendees at the 13th Planetary Crater Consortium Meeting in Boulder, Colorado.

— Text provided by Stuart J. Robbins, Southwest Research Institute