Mikayla Huffman

Impact Physics & Planetary Atmospheres

General Audience Summary of Current Research

Inferring the CO2 Abundance in Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková from [O I] Observations: Implications for the Source of Icy Grains in Cometary Comae

First Author Conference Abstracts

About Me

I'm currently a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in CU Boulder's Astrophysics and Planetary Science Ph.D. program, working with Dr. David Brain. I have also worked with Dr. Kelsi Singer and Dr. Adam McKay. I did my undergraduate at William & Mary, and graduated summa cum laude, with a physics major (honors), an honorary geology major, and a math minor. I taught ASTR-1200 Stars and Galaxies in Summer 2025 at CU Boulder.

Currently, I am researching tertiary impact craters on the Moon (secondaries of secondaries). My main thesis topic is the impact alteration of planetary atmospheres. I have dipped into comet spectroscopy as well. You can read my most recent paper about why some comets produce more water than should be accounted for by their size here. You can read my undergraduate honors thesis here. Stay tuned for my upcoming paper about atmospheres and impacts (under review at JGR Planets), and another on tertiaries (in prep)!

My hometown is Falls Church, VA, and I currently live in Boulder, CO with my ball python, Beaker, and my black lab mix, Riley. In my free time, I like playing Dungeons & Dragons and do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. My goal is to produce science that brings people together and to be a mentor for early-career scientists! Feel free to reach out anytime.

Website last updated: 1/21/2026

Space for everyone

Connect with me

Email | mikaylarhuffman(at)gmail.com, mikayla.huffman(at)colorado.edu

GitHub

ORCID 0009-0000-2828-2263

Google Scholar

BlueSky & Twitter

YouTube

General Audience Summary of Current Research

If you take a cup of water and drop an ice cube in it, you'll end up with more water than when you started. But, if you throw a snowball into the cup really hard, you'll splash out a bunch of water. Whether you end up with less or more water than when you started depends on a lot of things- how big your cup is, how much water was in it to start with, how big your ice cube is, how fast you're throwing it into the cup, how much ice is in your ice cube vs how much dust, etc.

The same thing is true of impacts and atmospheres. Comets are big balls of ice and dust. Asteroids can also have ice in them. When a slow, small comet hits a planet, the ice inside it can turn into gas in the planet's atmosphere (an atmosphere is the shell of gas around the planet). But, if you throw a really big, fast comet at a planet, it can "splash" out gases from the planet's atmosphere.

Of course, impact alteration is actually more complicated than this metaphor! I've been looking at the models in the literature that try to figure out how different impactors change atmospheres. So far, it looks like they disagree a lot! Yikes!

In the News

Reach for the stars: Astronomy Club shares its passion for exploring a galaxy far, far away Nov. 2023

The universe, Dungeons & Dragons and self-discovery: An interview with Mikayla Huffman Oct. 2023

Dr. Ellen Stofan Women in Planetary Science Blog Interview Sept. 2022

Mentoring for Careers in Physics Program Feb. 2022

Thomas Jefferson Prize in Natural Philosophy Feb. 2022

NASA Women in Stem Careers Sept. 2021

Dr. Jennifer Whitten Women in Planetary Science Blog Interview Aug. 2021

William & Mary Makerspace Nov. 2019

Timestamp 24:48 - my acceptance speech for the 2022 Thomas Jefferson Prize in Natural Philosophy from William & Mary

CV

CV 2026

First Author Papers

Inferring the CO2 Abundance in Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková from [O I] Observations: Implications for the Source of Icy Grains in Cometary Comae

Some comets produce more water ice than should be accounted for by their size. Why? Not sure, but it doesn't have to do with carbon dioxide outgassing.

Link to Planetary Science Journal, Link to arXiv