PHY 8000 Seminar: “The Future of Lunar and Mars Exploration”

The Physics seminar this week will meet online on Thursday, February 24, at 1:00 pm .  You can join us live at this link: https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/4a2dc489c4ad41729b116a7907adf865

The talk this week will be by NASA Chief Scientist Dr. James Green (pre-recorded).  The talk was originally presented in 2019 when Dr. Green was a plenary lecturer at the Fall 2019 AGU meeting.  

The talk is titled, “The Future of Lunar and Mars Exploration”, and is particularly timely as this talk includes an overview of the Artemis project. Artemis I is scheduled to launch this Spring or Summer to study the Earth’s moon.  Here is the talk abstract:

Based on analysis of the Apollo lunar samples, scientists believe that the Moon was formed out of a collision between the Earth with a Mars sized planet named Theia at a very early stage of the development of the solar system. From then on, the Earth and the Moon’s evolution have been intertwined. The Moon has kept the Earth’s rotational axis pointing in the same direction providing a significant level of stability for the Earth’s climate. Today, the Moon holds many fascinating mysteries for scientists to explore. Scientifically there have been a number of stunning advances in lunar science and a realization that going back to the Moon will provide scientists with the opportunity to accomplish transformational science in understanding the origin and evolution of our solar system. NASA’s future plan is to go to the Moon to stay and then onto Mars.