A local planetary scientist has received a prestigious national award named in honor of a giant in the field who also called the Old Pueblo home.
Faith Vilas, a senior scientist with the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute, is this year’s recipient of the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize from the American Astronomical Society.
The 41-year-old honor recognizes one researcher annually who has made outstanding contributors to the study of ours and other planetary systems.
This year’s award was announced on Friday by the Astronomical Society’s .
“I am completely amazed to be given the Kuiper Prize,†said Vilas, who received her doctorate degree from the U of A in 1984 and has been with the Planetary Science Institute for 15 years. “It’s fantastic to be honored by the DPS and my colleagues with this award.â€
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Vilas
has included groundbreaking research and the design of new instruments used to map the distribution of water in the inner solar system, capture the first image of the planet-forming circumstellar disk around another star and to study the moon, Mercury, asteroids and other celestial objects.
She has searched the mountains of Antarctica for meteorites and worked as a scientist for NASA, both at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
She has also served on the science teams for numerous space missions, including the Japanese space agency’s Hayabusa2 asteroid sampling spacecraft and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and MESSENGER mission to Mercury.
“In terms of both science and service, she has given so much to the planetary community over the span of her prestigious career,†said Amanda Hendrix, director of the Planetary Science Institute. “This commendation is so well deserved.â€
The institute was founded in Tucson in 1972 and has grown into one of the largest research firms of its kind in the world, with 101 researchers and around 300 active contracts totalling almost $18 million in annual revenue, about 90% of it from NASA.
Vilas joins a that includes astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan (1998), University of Arizona Regents’ professor emeritus Donald Hunten (1987) and U of A professor emeritus William Hubbard (2005).
Geologist Eugene Shoemaker, who co-discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, won the first Kuiper Prize in 1984.
The award’s namesake is considered the father of modern planetary science. In 1960, the U of A lured Kuiper away from the University of Chicago to launch what would become the world famous Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson. The Dutch-American astronomer remained in Tucson until his death in 1973 at age 68. The university’s , just east of Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium, now bears his name.
Vilas is one of just six women to receive the Kuiper Prize. She will be presented with her award in Helsinki, Finland, on Sept. 11 during the annual joint meeting between the Division of Planetary Sciences and the Europlanet Science Congress.
During her keynote speech at the conference, Vilas plans to reflect on the incredible advances that have been made during her half-century in the planetary sciences.
“When I began, humankind’s first space probes were passing planets in our Solar System for the first time,†she said. “Now we study samples of material returned from the surfaces of asteroids to the Earth and determine the compositions of atmospheres of planets around other stars. Our scientific growth has been extraordinary, and I’ll talk about what it has been like to be a part of that when I receive the award.â€
