SwRI-Led LUCY Team Announces New Asteroid Target

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will add another asteroid encounter to its 4-billion-mile journey.

Jan 30, 2023

Dr. William Bottke Named AGU Fellow

Dr. William Bottke, director of Southwest Research Institute’s Department of Space Studies, has been named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Sep 19, 2022

SwRI-Led Study Provides New Insights About Structure of Asteroid Bennu

Study has characterized the layer just below the asteroid’s surface as composed of weakly bound rock fragments containing twice the void space as the overall asteroid.

Jul 14, 2022

SwRI Researcher Shows How Elliptical Craters Shed Light on Age of Saturn's Moons

A new SwRI study describes how unique populations of craters on two of Saturn’s moons could help indicate the satellites’ age and the conditions of their formation.

Jun 22, 2022

Vesta and Ceres: Insights from the Dawn Mission

Staff Scientist Dr. Simone Marchi (Div. 19) co-edited a new book, Vesta and Ceres: Insights from the Dawn Mission for the Origin of the Solar System, published by Cambridge University Press in April 2022. Read the citation, doi.org/10.1017/9781108856324

Aug 8, 2022

SwRI-Led Study Points to Multiple Eruptions Forming Pluto's Giant Ice Volcanos

New Horizons mission team determined multiple episodes of cryovolcanism may have created unique surface structures on Pluto.

Mar 30, 2022

SwRI Scientists Help Determine Comet Delivery to Moon

SwRI scientists joined a team that modeled data from a planned lunar impact. Findings suggest volitiles that are present in a crater near the Moon's south pole were delivered by comet.

Feb 24, 2022

SwRI Scientist Simulates How Solar System Formed from Rings

Dr. Rogerio Deienno, who specializes in celestial mechanics and dynamical astronomy, and his colleagues developed a model where three rings of planetesimals, the building blocks for planets, would form from the swirling disk of gas and dust around the Sun known as the solar nebula.

Jan 5, 2022

CYGNSS Satellites Celebrate Five Years of Critical Hurricane Research

A constellation of SwRI-built and -operated satellites recently celebrated five years in orbit, circling the tropics to assess wind speeds to better understand how hurricanes intensify.

Dec 20, 2021

New Horizons Scientist Measures Brightness of our Galaxy

A new study led by Southwest Research Institute determined the brightness of the galactic Lyman-alpha background using a SwRI-developed instrument aboard NASA’s Kuiper Belt space probe, New Horizons.

Nov 23, 2021

NASA Selects SwRI-LED Cubesat to Assess the Origins of Hot Plasma in the Sun's Corona

NASA has selected the CubeSat Imaging X-Ray Solar Spectrometer (CubIXSS), led by SwRI, to measure the elemental composition of hot, multimillion-degree plasmas in the Sun's corona.

Nov 5, 2121

Studying the Solar System through Research and Exploration

Southwest Research Institute's Planetary Science Directorate has over 80 employees and is located in the Exeter Building at 11th and Walnut in downtown Boulder, Colorado.

Areas of research and development:

Space Studies
Planetary Physics
Planetary Atmospheres and Surfaces
Lunar Origin and Evolution
Solar Physics
Solar System Dynamics
Astronomy
Computer Systems
Space Operations
Space Technologies
Mission Operations

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), based in San Antonio, Texas, is an independent, nonprofit, applied engineering and physical science research and development organization with over 3000 employees. The Solar System Science & Exploration Division's goals are excellence in space research and the expansion and deepening of SwRI's space research efforts.

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