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Katherine Mistick
Lunar Geomorphology
2017-2020
In August of 2019, I presented a poster “Determining the Age of an Unnamed Lunar Impact Crater in South Pole-Aitken Basin Using Boulder Size-Frequency Distributions” at the NASA Exploration Science Forum in Moffet Field, California.
In October of 2019, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) approved our request to name this previously unnamed crater Vaughan, after Dorothy Vaughan the famous NASA Mathematician.
This work has been published in an article "Determining the age of Vaughan, a potential source crater for lunar meteorites, using boulder size-frequency distributions", in the journal Icarus, available open-access here.
Starting in 2017, as a Student Research Assistant for the Planetary Science Institute, I worked on lunar geomorphology project with Dr. Ryan Watkins as the Principal Investigator. Early on I conducted many boulder counts using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) Images as base-imagery. Using Crater Helper Tools in ArcMap GIS, I hand-selected boulders surrounding lunar craters.
In 2018 I was awarded a $250 Conference Travel Award from Washington University in St. Louis's Office of Undergradute Research, in order to attend the 2018 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. Here I presented a poster on which I was second author, "Boulder distributions around young lunar impact craters: Case study of South Ray crater”.
Upon graduating with my Bachelor of Arts in Earth and Planetary Sciences, I was promoted to Research Assistant and continued to work on boulder counts, but also became involved in the analysis of boulder distributions and the potential to age-date and better understand regolith production on the moon.
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