KU Physics and Astronomy Professor receives more than $600,000 from NASA for his research

Associate Professor Ian Crossfield (Physics & Astronomy) was awarded more than $600,000 from the NASA Exoplanet Research Program, NASA's main grant program to support studies of planets in other solar systems.  Professor Crossfield will lead a team of researchers from ten institutions including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UC Irvine, Washington University St. Louis, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, the University of Chicago, UC Riverside, University of Hawaii, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, with KU as the lead institution for this grant. 

The grant will support Professor Crossfield's work to obtain radial-velocity spectroscopy of planet-hosting stars, providing detailed measurements of their masses and compositions in preparation for follow-up observations to search for their atmospheres with NASA's flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope. Said Crossfield, "We are excited to use NASA's best ground-based telescope, the W.M. Keck Observatory, to start characterizing new targets for its best space-based telescope, JWST."