Robin Canup facts for kids

Robin M. Canup (born November 20, 1968) is an American planetary scientist. This means she studies how planets and their moons form. She is famous for her ideas about how our Moon and other moons in space came to be. In 2003, she won a special award called the Harold C. Urey Prize for her important work. In April 2022, she helped share the results of a big report called the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. This report helps guide future space missions.

Early Life and Education

Robin Canup earned her first degree from Duke University. Later, she received her PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her education helped her become a leading expert in understanding how planets and moons are made.

How Planets and Moons Form

Canup is well-known for her research on the giant impact hypothesis. This idea suggests that planets and moons can form after huge collisions in space. She uses powerful computer models to simulate, or act out, these planetary crashes.

The Moon's Origin

In 2012, Robin Canup shared a new idea about how our Moon formed. She suggested that the Moon and Earth were created in several steps. It started with a massive crash between two planetary bodies. Each of these bodies was larger than Mars. After this first collision, they crashed into each other again. This second crash formed what we now call Earth. After this re-collision, a disk of material surrounded the new Earth. This material then came together to form our Moon. She has also written a book explaining how the Earth and Moon began.

Pluto and Charon

Canup's research also explores how other objects in space might have formed. She has published work suggesting that Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, also formed from a giant impact. This shows that big collisions might be a common way for moons to appear around planets.

Beyond Science

Besides her scientific work, Robin Canup is also a talented ballet dancer. She even danced the main role in the ballet Coppélia. This happened just one week after she finished her PhD studies.

Selected Works

• Robin M. Canup, Kevin Righter, Nicolas Dauphas et al.: Origin of the Moon. In: Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry. Vol. 89, No 1. Dec. 2023.

See also

In Spanish: Robin Canup para niños