Monday,
March 11, 2013
6:00 - 7:30 pm
Pellissippi
State Technical Community College
10915 Hardin
Valley Road, Knoxville
J.L Goins Administration
Building,
Cafeteria Annex
MARCH
PRESENTATION
Curioser and Curioser: The Curiosity
Rover Mission in Gale Crater
By
Dr. Linda C. Kah
University of Tennessee
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Knoxville, Tennessee
Abstract
On August 6, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover safely landed on the surface of Mars. The Curiosity rover represent's NASA's most ambitious mission to Mars – carrying a wealth of analytical equipment aimed at the goal of understanding whether past or present environments of Gale Crater may have been capable of supporting microbial life. On the ground, the mission is supported by more than 250 scientists and engineers, who bring a vast range of experiences to the interpretation of data collected by Curiosity. This presentation will review the goals of the mission and present a look into the progress during these early stages of the mission.
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Linda C. Kah is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at the University of Tennessee. Since receiving her own degrees (BS and MS from MIT; PhD from Harvard University), she has concentrated most of her efforts on understanding the evolution of habitable environments in the early Earth. Her work has taken to her a variety of remote field localities – from Arctic Canada to Saharan west Africa – but Mars represents her most remote field work yet! On the MSL mission, she works as part of the MARDI-MAHLI-MASTCAM imaging team, and splits her time between planning activities for Curiosity and analyzing the downlinked images and data.
Page updated May 26, 2018 |