Important Announcement

December 18, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

As we move into 2021, we look forward to a new year and the hope that our lives soon will return to some semblance of normalcy. We want to help ease the fatigue many feel now and allow us all a little more time to recharge over the holidays. Therefore, we have decided to move the LPSC abstract deadline to January 12, 2021. This is a small accommodation, but one that we hope will be helpful and welcome.

The 52nd LPSC is fast approaching, and we’re excited at the opportunity to engage a global audience and inspire the next generation of planetary scientists. As you know, the meeting will be virtual, and we are working hard to optimize the virtual meeting experience as much as possible. We have been researching virtual technologies and capabilities to deliver an exceptional experience that will facilitate sharing your research, asking questions, and networking with colleagues.

A conference of this scale has its challenges, and we ask for your support as we roll out the program in the coming weeks. The virtual experience will look and feel different than an in-person conference, and we need your help to make it a success.

Overview:
The 52nd LPSC will feature the latest results in planetary science shared during five full days with five consecutive sessions each day.

In addition to scheduled NASA Night and Decadal Survey debriefs and the Masursky Lecture, the all-virtual program will feature the following session types:

  • Oral sessions with both live and on-demand presentations
  • Poster sessions with tools for built-in chats, sharing presentations, and contacting authors
  • Virtual networking opportunities for students and early-career scientists
  • Exhibitor hall with opportunities to browse booths and meet with vendors
  • Educational opportunities for planetary scientists, students, and the public
  • Advertising for self-organized, self-supported ancillary meetings

Building the conference program:
We are restricting the 52nd LPSC meeting footprint to a single week of live programming, with no more than six hours per day of oral sessions. The active hours will be designed to present enough viewing opportunities for everyone, regardless of geographic location.

Oral sessions at LPSC will be similar to other virtual meetings: prerecorded full-length talks that are available for advance viewing, plus short lightning presentations, complemented by live question and answer sessions for topics of high impact and interest. Thus, anyone who is assigned an oral presentation should be prepared to deliver both full-length and brief versions of the talk.

For posters, we’re choosing an approach that allows presenters to pick the times that they wish to be available to discuss their posters. Those times can be at any point during the five-day meeting and are not restricted to the live oral session hours or any particular day. We hope that flexibility is useful to both poster presenters and attendees, particularly those in time zones far from the central U.S.

As an international planetary science community, we have many achievements to celebrate and share in spite of numerous challenges in 2020. We look forward to hearing about the latest results and scientific discoveries at the 52nd LPSC.

Please stay safe, enjoy your holidays, and we can’t wait to see you (virtually) in March 2021!

Sincerely,
Lisa Gaddis (USRA/LPI) and Eileen Stansbery (JSC/ARES)
LPSC Conference Co-Chairs