Katherine Joy | |
|---|---|
 Joy attending Parliamentary Update in 2014 | |
| Born | Katherine Helen Joy |
| Other names | Katie Joy[3] |
| Education | Sackville College[4] |
| Alma mater | Royal Holloway, University of London (BSc) University College London (PhD) |
| Awards | Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2015) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Meteorites Lunar science[1] |
| Institutions | University of Manchester NASA Lunar Science Institute Birkbeck, University of London |
| Thesis | Studies in lunar geology and geochemistry using sample analysis and remote sensing measurements (2007) |
| Doctoral advisor | Ian Crawford[2] |
| Website | www |
Katherine Helen JoyFRAS is a professor inEarth Sciences at theUniversity of Manchester.[1][5] Joy has studied lunar samples from theApollo program[3][6][4] as part of her research onmeteorites andlunar science.[1]
Joy was educated atSackville School, East Grinstead,[4] and studied geology atRoyal Holloway, University of London, where she graduated with first class honours in 2003.[7] Joy was a doctoral student atUniversity College London, working on the evolution of theMoon, supervised byIan Crawford.[2][8] Her work considered sample analysis and remote sensing. She held a joint position at theNatural History Museum, London.[citation needed] She was part of theEuropean Space Agency (ESA)SMART-1 mission.[9] In 2006, Joy joinedBirkbeck, University of London, where she used the Demonstration of a Compact Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (D-CIXS) instrument, part of theSMART-1 mission, to studyX-ray fluorescence from lunar samples.[10] D-CIXS was designed by theRutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and could measure elemental abundances ofmagnesium, aluminium andsilicon.[10][2] Her work has used data from the Mercury ImagingX-ray Spectrometer (MIXS) on theBepiColomboMercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO).[11]
In 2007 Joy was appointed apostdoctoral researchfellow at Birkbeck, where she performed mineralogical and geochemical investigations into lunar rock and used this to understand chemical information collected from remote sensing.
In 2010 Joy joined theJohnson Space Center as aNASA Lunar Science Institute[12]research fellow working onlunar regolith.[13] By investigating the composition of lunar soil Joy hopes to understand the Moon's bombardment history. While in the United States Joy was a member of the Center for Lunar Science and Exploration. She moved to theAntarctic search for meteorites (ANSMET) in 2011, where she spent three months searching for lunar meteorites in theMiller Range inAntarctica.[14][7] The Antarctic is well suited to the identification of meteorites; it is cold enough to preserve them but white enough for the dark meteorites to stand out.[15] She led the first UK team to recover meteorite samples fromAntarctica in collaboration with theBritish Antarctic Survey (BAS); the Polar Meteorite Exploration and Research programme.[16][17] Over the course of four weeks, Joy's mission collected almost forty lunar meteorites from the ice.[18] One of the 4.3 billion year old meteorites studied by Joy contained evidence of active volcanoes on Mars, a surprising finding that indicated volcanic activity started hundreds of millions of years before it had previously been estimated.[18]
Joy has studied the 382 kg of lunar rocks that were brought back from the Apollo missions.[9] She believes that lunar rocks will hold answers to whether life exists beyond theSolar System. Joy has called for future generation of space craft to be more careful about where they collect rocks.[19] She found fragments of ancient asteroids in the rocks brought back by theApollo 16 mission, which indicates that primitive asteroids regularly bombarded the Moon over 3.4 billion years ago.[18] Joy joined theUniversity of Manchester in 2012, where she was awarded aRoyal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) to study lunar meteorites. She is a member of theEuropean Space Agency Package for Resource Observation and in-Situ Prospecting for Exploration, Commercial exploitation and Transportation (PROSPECT) drill – the Sample Excavation and Extraction Device.[20]
Joy has been involved with the development ofOur Earth: Its Climate, History, and Processes, aUniversity of Manchester programme available onCoursera that covers the formation of the Moon and importance of the Moon on Earth.[21] In 2019 Joy appeared onThe Life Scientific.[22] She has written forThe Conversation and appeared onThe Sky at Night and at theBluedot Festival.[17][23][24]
Her publications[1][5][6] include:
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| Academics | |