The SETI Institute headquarters, like so many organizations, has remained shut down since March 16, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And, like many other organizations, our scientists and staff have been impacted both personally and professionally. Importantly, our work and our science have continued. The third quarter of 2020 was remarkably productive, as you will see in the Activity Report covering the period from July-September 2020.

We are enormously proud of our scientists and their work, and we think you will be too.

Here are some highlights:

62 peer-reviewed publications including:

• Evidence for sulfur-bearing species on Callisto's leading hemisphere: Sourced from Jupiter's irregular satellites or Io? Astrophysical Journal Letters (Richard Cartwright, Joseph Roser and Chloe Beddingfield)
• Surface potential of a rotating duplex consisting of two joined spheres Icarus (Anthony Dobrovslskis)
• Updating the global inventory of dune fields on Mars and identification of many small dune fields Icarus (Lori Fenton)
• In search for a planet better than Earth: today´s top contenders for a superhabitable planet Astrobiology (Dirk Schulze-Makuch)
• SETI: The Argument for Artefact Searches International Journal of Astrobiology (Seth Shostak)

White papers including for the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032 including:

• Pathways to Sustainable Planetary Science (Matija Ćuk)
• In-situ microCT for planetary exploration (Philippe Sarrazin, Rachel Obbard, and Barbara Lafuente)
• The Saturn Ring Skimmer Mission Concept: The next step to explore Saturn’s rings, atmosphere, interior and inner magnetosphere (Matthew Tiscareno and Mitchell Gordon)
• BIOMARS: A Foundational High-Resolution Environmental Sensor Array (Nathalie Cabrol, Lori Fenton, Kimberly Warren-Rhodes, Pablo Sobron, Margaret Race, and Virginia Gulick)
• The case for re-exploring Triton (Orkan Umurhan)

Conferences and abstracts proceedings including:

• The Matrix Isolation Spectroscopy and Optical Constants of Ices Facility at NASA-Ames, Bay Area Planetary Science Meeting 2020 (Joseph Roser)
• Volatile Ice Precipitation and Erosion in Pluto’s Eastern Hemisphere, AAS Division for Planetary Sciences 2020 (Oliver White)
• The science case for spacecraft exploration of the Uranian satellites. AAS Division for Planetary Sciences 2020 (Richard Cartwright and Chloe Beddingfield)
• Are the Inner Satellites of Uranus Stable? AAS/DDA Virtual Meeting (August 3-7, 2020): AAS/Division of Dynamical Astronomy Meeting (Matija Ćuk, Robert French, Mark Showalter, and Matthew Tiscareno)

Honors and awards:

• Peter Tenenbaum (July 2020) NASA Honor Award for Exceptional Public Achievement in support of the TESS Mission

Learn more and download the full report here.