Mars Exploration from the 17th Century Through Tonight
James Wray, Assistant Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, will review what the past several decades of Mars exploration have taught us and what important questions still remain.
James completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2010 working with Steve Squyres, the lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Rovers. After postdoctoral work at Cornell and the Jet Propulsion Lab, he joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences last summer. James is on the science teams for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Science Laboratory and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter originally planned to launch in 2016. His research focuses on planetary surfaces and the search for habitable environments beyond Earth.
The Mars Curiosity Rover - Assessing the conditions for life on the Red Planet
NASA-JPL Solar System Ambassador and graduate student in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University, Ginny Mauldin-Kinney, will present an overview of the technology and science objectives of the MSL mission itself.
Ginny is a Solar System Ambassador for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a graduate student in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University. Her research focus is the geomorphology of the Martian surface.
The Future of Outer Solar System Exploration lies with JUICE (JUpiter ICy-moon Explorer)
Carol Paty, Assistant Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, will introduce us to the objectives of JUICE, the Jupiter Icy moons Explorer, the next large science mission of the European Space Agency (ESA).
Carol completed her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in Geophysics & Space Physics in 2006. Her thesis research focused on studying Jupiter's largest icy moon, Ganymede, using a combination of data returned from the Galileo spacecraft and computer simulations. She spent two years working as a postdoc at the Southwest Research Institute as a member of the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer team studying the geysers of Enceladus before joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Carol is also a Participating Scientist on the Cassini mission, examining seasonal variability in Saturn's magnetosphere. Broadly speaking, her research focuses on planetary magnetospheric dynamics, magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, icy moon interactions, and space plasma physics simulations.
The Moon and Mercury: Water, Water Everywhere?
Thom Orlando and Gregory Grieves describe the search for water on the Moon and Mercury and the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) to be launched next May as well as BepiColombo, ESA's first mission to Mercury scheduled for 2015.
In the Beginning: The Origin of Life on Earth and Elsewhere
Irena will discuss her investigations of the possible chemistry of prebiotic life here and its implications for the search for life elsewhere.
Irena has studied the problem of chemical origins of life throughout her career. She completed her Ph.D. at Brandeis University in 2008 working with Judith Herzfeld on elucidating the structure of biogenic polymers with solid state nuclear magnetic imaging. She joined Nicholas Hud's lab at Georgia Tech as a postdoctoral fellow in 2009. Irena's research interests include behavior of biomacromolecules in non-aqueous environments, abiotic synthesis of biological and biomimetic compounds and evolvable chemical systems.