Editor’s note:
Star science reporter Dan Sorenson and higher education reporter Eric Swedlund have spent two months researching and reporting for a three-day series about space sciences at the University of Arizona and across the state. The Star’s three-day special report begins Sunday, complete with exclusive online-only content. Along the way our reporters interviewed dozens of scientists in Tucson, Tempe and Flagstaff and as a preview to the series, will introduce you to some of the researchers, programs and missions daily on this blog.

From the start, the UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory had a broad base of experts, including lunar studies, planetary atmospheres, asteroids, infrared astronomy and spectroscopic analysis. It was founded with 10 people and grew to 119 by 1967.

In 1964, NASA funded a $1.2 million UA space sciences building, named for LPL founder Gerard P. Kuiper months after his death in 1973. UA scientists since have participated in almost every American planetary mission have been awarded more NASA grants for space exploration than any other university in the nation.

One of the lab’s first tasks was to construct a series of telescopes in the Catalinas. The first telescope was a 21-inch reflector, placed at the site of an old telephone company installation. A 28-inch telescope was placed nearby and the LPL’s best instrument, a 61-inch telescope, saw first light in Oct. 7, 1965.

But even with his observatory in the Catalinas, Kuiper was driven to search out Earth’s best sites for astronomy. He scouted locations in Chile and Hawaii that are now used for some of the world’s best telescopes.

Bill Hartmann, one of Kuiper’s first graduate students at Arizona, spent much of the summer of 1964 living by himself on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, each night driving to the summit to do site testing. At nearly 14,000 feet, Mauna Kea is now home to the world’s largest observatory, but it was entirely Kuiper’s concept to seek out that location and he was deeply disappointed when NASA turned over management to the University of Hawaii instead of the UA, Hartmann says.

“He had a tremendous interest in applying new technology, like infrared, to modern observatories and telescopes,” Hartmann says. “He was really into what he called ‘big science,’ which was just emerging at the time and meant government support at the highest level.”

Hartmann said that when he moved to Arizona in 1961, anybody interested in researching planets really had only three choices for a mentor: Kuiper, his longtime rival Harold C. Ury or Fred Whipple of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. “You couldn’t come to any university and say you wanted to study planetary science. It wasn’t a field yet,” Hartmann says.

“The early 1960s were an incredibly exciting time because Kennedy announced we were going to put humans on the moon, basically in response to the Yuri Gagarin flight,” Hartmann says. “There was an incredible ramping up of studying the moon and the planets.”

Most of the early students came to planetary sciences from astronomy, and found they needed instruction in geology. UA geology professor Spencer Titley, an expert in mining, took several of Kuiper’s early graduate students under his wing, inventing a crash course in geology so that astronomy students could have a better background for planetary study, Hartmann says.

“To this day in planetary science a gulf remains between the ones who came from the astronomy stream and the ones who came from the geology stream,” says Hartmann, who basically did both, with a master’s in geology and doctorate in astronomy. “This whole 40-year period has been a continual transition of the solar system and planets from astronomical objects to geological objects.”

“It’s a little bit of a weird field, but there are fantastic opportunities for interdisciplinary science. Let’s talk to the people who look and talk to the people who touch and bring those together into a comprehensive picture,” Hartmann says.

Hartmann became an assistant professor in 1966 and in 1969 was ready to leave when the head of the Mariner 9 mission invited him to join the mission. He signed on as co-investigator with Caltech’s Bruce Murray, who would later direct the JPL, and Cornell’s Carl Sagan, another Kuiper protege, and the Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet when it circles Mars in 1971.

Around the same time, Hartmann was at the core of a group of scientists that in 1972 became the Planetary Science Institute, an independent research center that now brings in about $4 or $5 million a year in grants.

“The first staff felt that Tucson was the astronomical capital of the world and the university could only absorb so many planetary scientists,” Hartmann said.

Melissa Lamberton, a UA junior in environmental sciences, started in September on an oral history of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, nicknamed the “Luny Lab,” as part of the UA’s NASA Space Grant program and to date has interviewed more than 30 current and former faculty members, staff and graduate students.

“Its history is all tied up with Apollo and the space race and the history of the U.S., so it’s a really interesting project to do,” says Lamberton, who describes being most drawn to the “firsts” and the enthusiasm of the scientists, some who have been on the cutting-edge for four decades. “It’s really cool to be standing on the edge of this vastness before you and having no idea what you’re going to find.”

“When I look over my notes later, it’s all this science stuff, physics and spectroscopy, that I don’t understand. But during the interviews, the passion in their voices turned it to poetry,” she says.

Lamberton says she’s also struck by how collegial the laboratory is. An example she cites is the “Hawthorne House,” a rental home about a mile from campus that for 30 years was occupied continuously by LPL graduate students and as its Web site says, traditionally hosted “infamous parties,” including the annual “Bratfest.”