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The mission of the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences is to understand and protect our home in the universe.

The Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences at UCLA is on a mission to understand and protect our home in the universe. We seek to understand how planets like ours form and evolve, how life on our planet developed, and whether life exists elsewhere. We study the physical and chemical conditions that prevailed 4.6 billion years ago when the planets formed, the processes that shape planetary bodies, and interactions with the space environment. Using data from the lab, field, spacecraft, and telescopes, we study a wide range of important questions about the Earth, the Solar System, and beyond. We also characterize natural hazards so that we can better protect humanity from earthquakes, tsunamis, space weather, and asteroid impacts. We invite you to explore our web site, epss.ucla.edu, to find out about the impressive research conducted by our students, researchers, and faculty.

08/11/2026

“Outer space is not empty. Among the micrometeoroids and other perils awaiting us beyond low-Earth orbit, deep space is constantly bombarded by complex forms of ionizing radiation from all directions. This Fiat Lux freshman seminar will explore how different aspects of space travel affect the human body, focusing on space radiation.”

📌EPS SCI 19 Fiat Lux Freshman Seminar: Cosmic Radiobiology and Human Health in Space

Instructors: Vassilis Angelopoulos, PhD; Nicolas Nelson, MD
Email: [email protected]
Class Meetings: Wed 3:00–4:30 PM
Location: Geology 3814

🔗Course link:
https://sa.ucla.edu/ro/Public/SOC/Results/ClassDetail?term_cd=26F&subj_area_cd=EPS%20SCI&crs_catlg_no=0019%20%20%20%20&class_id=411057201&class_no=%20002%20%20

07/29/2026

Congratulations to Dr. Jean-Luc Margot on being awarded the Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair and International Francqui Professor Chair honors for the 2026-2027 academic year!
Read more about it here: https://physicalsciences.ucla.edu/jean-luc-margot-awarded-fulbright-tocqueville-distinguished-chair-and-international-francqui-professor-chair/

05/26/2026

Come out to support our amazing undergraduate researchers after colloquium!!

⚒️4:30 - 5:45pm in Geology 3680 🪨

03/07/2026

✨The Slowing of Time by Emanuel Röhss✨

Join us on Wednesday, March 11 at 12pm in the Chemistry Collaboratory for this special lecture from world-renowned Swedish visual artist.

✨Video transcript: My talk will begin with my current sculpture project, in which I’m working with meteorites from
UCLA’s collection alongside other materials to create works that explore time across human, physical, geological, and metaphysical dimensions.
I’ll discuss my approach as a sculptor investigating these concepts: my initial questions and
starting points, how my research unfolds, what led me to UCLA’s meteorite collection, and how I develop sculptural forms in the studio.
I’ll also describe how I plan to work with iron meteorites from the collection as part of my current project.

✨More details: Depending on time and interest, I may include a brief hands-on demonstration of alginate molding—using a volunteer’s hand and casting it in plaster—to illustrate one of the material processes central to this project.
To provide context for this work, I’ll share previous projects that similarly engage with temporal perception, presented in reverse chronology:
• Feeding the Rat — paintings and sculptures exploring deep time through the geology of the High Sierra.

• Science of the Sublime — short film (excerpt) examining temporal experience in the Sierra Nevada.

• Times Past and Future — clay sculptures investigating Hollywood architecture, entropy, and the boundary between reality and fiction.

• Belly of the Beast — an exploration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1920s Los Angeles architecture as a lens for processing psychological trauma in both lived experience and cinema.

✨ BIO: EMANUEL RÖHSS (b. Gothenburg, Sweden) is a visual artist based in LA. His work explores the intersection of built environments and natural forces, examining how historical and contemporary architectures shape - and are shaped - by human consciousness, popular culture, and temporal experience.

Central to Röhss’ practice is an investigation of time across multiple scales: from the immediacy of psychological perception to the vast expanses of geological deep time.

02/27/2026

✨🌊“Cheers from the ocean” -Tina, Rhegan, & Max 🌊✨

Professor of Marine Geomicrobiology, Dr. Tina Treude is currently on board the German Research Vessel SONNE, off the California/Mexico coast, where she and current graduate students Rhegan Thomason and Maxwell Packebush are studying methane seeps with barite and carbonate precipitates at the seafloor.

These are videos directly from the MARUM LiveDive YouTube livestream (2/26/26) that you can watch to destress as we enter the final stretch of the Winter quarter!

They are diving approximately every other day from 8am to 8 pm-PST, so make sure to keep an eye out when they go live!

Wishing them a safe and successful field expedition!!

11/04/2025

Join Professional Geologist, Josh Goodwin, PG, CEG, and learn about the Pathway to the Professional Geologist’s License.
💎Wednesday, 11/05
📍Geology 3680
🕛 12:00-1:00pm
🍕Pizza will be provided!!🍕

Everyone is welcome, please share!

10/31/2025

✨EPSS seismologists Liuwei Xu, Lingsen Meng and Elizabeth Su headline Science Magazine✨

A new study led by Professor Lingsen Meng and Dr. Liuwei Xu (UCLA Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences) reveals that the devastating 2025 Mandalay, Myanmar earthquake (Mw 7.7) produced one of the fastest and longest earthquake ruptures ever recorded on land.

The research, published in Science on October 29, 2025, shows that the earthquake ruptured more than 530 kilometers along the Sagaing Fault, with a 450-kilometer supershear segment that propagated faster than the speed of seismic shear waves—an extremely rare phenomenon.

Using global seismic data, satellite radar, and optical imagery, the team reconstructed the rupture in unprecedented detail. Their findings highlight how fault geometry, long-term stress accumulation, and contrasting rock properties combined to enable the exceptional rupture speed, offering new insights into how devastating earthquakes evolve in continental regions.

🔗 Link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady6100

09/11/2025

✨The NEO Surveyor spacecraft arrived at the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in May 2025, marking a major milestone in its development!✨

The instrument and enclosure will undergo crucial integration and testing of its instruments and key components at SDL’s state-of-the-art facility.
The instrument enclosure will house the observatory’s scientific instrument, which includes a three-reflection aluminum telescope, state-of-the-art infrared detectors, and an innovative passive cooling system to keep the instrument at cryogenic temperatures.
The telescope, which has an aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters), features detectors sensitive to two infrared wavelengths in which near-Earth objects re-radiate solar heat. The instrument enclosure is designed to ensure heat produced by the spacecraft and instrument during operations doesn’t interfere with its infrared observations.

As NASA’s first space-based detection mission specifically designed for planetary defense, NEO Surveyor will seek out, measure, and characterize the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth. While many near-Earth objects don’t reflect much visible light, they glow brightly in infrared light due to heating by the Sun.

Targeting launch in late 2027, the NEO Surveyor mission is led by Professor Amy Mainzer at UCLA for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and is being managed by JPL for the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, SDL, and are among the companies that were contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder will support operations, and IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for producing some of the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Image Credit:
Space Dynamics Laboratory/Allison Bills

07/15/2025

✨Congratulations to Professor Dave Paige’s group that will be a major part of the science and operations team for an instrument selected for NASA’s Artemis Lunar Terrain Vehicle.✨

“The Lunar Microwave Active-Passive Spectrometer (L-MAPS) will help define what is below the Moon’s surface and search for possible locations of ice. Containing both a spectrometer and a ground-penetrating radar, the instrument suite will measure temperature, density, and subsurface structures to more than 131 feet (40 meters) below the surface.”

Screenshot and click on the link for more information: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-instruments-for-artemis-lunar-terrain-vehicle/

If you have any news that you’d like to share with the EPSS community please send us a message!

06/16/2025

To our 2025 Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences Scholars!

To those who spent countless hours bent over microscopes, or hunched over map boards under the blazing sun.
To those who decoded the secrets of chemistry, physics, geology, and engineering.
To those who dared to look up— past the clouds, past the stratosphere— toward distant planets and the edges of our solar system.

You’ve tested your limits. You’ve asked hard questions. You’ve mapped the unseen and measured the unmeasurable.
Your curiosity, grit, and brilliance will carry you far— whether deep into the Earth or far beyond it.

You’re tough as diamonds and shine like stars.

Congratulations! We’re so proud of you.

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595 Charles Young Drive East
Los Angeles, CA
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https://epss.ucla.edu/

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