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Jim Arnold

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 18, 2012
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Jim Arnold, founding chemist at UCSD, dies at age 88
“James R. Arnold, founding chairman of UC San Diego’s chemistry department and first director of the California Space Institute whose contributions to science spanned the study of cosmic rays to the future of manned space flight, died Friday, Jan. 6. He was 88. A longtime consultant to NASA, Arnold helped to set science priorities for missions, including the Apollo flights to the moon. He first served on a NASA committee in 1959, just three months after the space agency was established.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

6 responses to “Jim Arnold”

  1. Paul Tompkins says:
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    I had the pleasure of Meeting Jim Arnold in grad school when Carnegie Mellon was pursuing Discovery-class missions to search for lunar polar ice. Dr. Arnold authored one of the seminal papers on the subject, well before the topic heated up in the 90s with the results from Clementine and Lunar Prospector. We invited him in to speak to us and advise us on how to proceed in our early proposal phase. So happy to know he was able to witness the confirmation of lunar water with the LCROSS/EPOXI/Chandrayaan missions.

    • Anonymous says:
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      I too met Jim in the course of working with lunar mission data.  Jim’s paper on the thermodynamics of the random walk of hydroxls and water molecules provided the theoretical foundation for everyone’s work going forward.  He was a very nice person to young students as well.

  2. Paul Spudis says:
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    Jim Arnold was not only responsible for reviving the lunar polar ice idea, he championed the Lunar Polar Orbiter mission to map the Moon globally for many years when lunar missions were out of fashion.  He produced the first orbital geochemical maps of the Moon from the Apollo gamma-ray spectrometer and discovered the famous “thorium hot spot” in the western maria of the Moon.  Building on Gene Shoemaker’s analytical models, Jim also did some of the definitive work on regolith turnover, erosion, and burial rates and the interaction of particles with the lunar surface.  He shall be missed.

  3. Michael Spencer says:
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    Hey Keith,

    I appreciate these notices, sad as they are. An era is passing! I wonder- if you knew these guys, or things they did, a few words about who they were, what kind of guys they were, what they did would be much appreciated. for some of us out here, your site it our only pair of glasses that sees inside NASA. Thanks for all the stuff you do.
    Thanks Paul, and Dennis. I just feel these ‘old warriors’ were so special. We owe them so much.

    • Anonymous says:
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      Indeed, these guys slogged through the long hard years when no one gave a crap about the Moon.  My good friend Paul Spudis is also one of these heros.

      The Moon and its resources are critical to our planet’s future and I look forward to naming things after the science pioneers in this area.

  4. Steve Harrington says:
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    Jim ran a lecture series at UCSD through the California Space Institute, which was always very interesting, whether is was Joe Carroll talking about space tethers, or Gwynne Shotwell talking about Turbopump problems. There is still an annual lecture in his honor. 
    Steve