Events & Activities - Listing
Keynote Address
The Mission to Mars
Dr. Steven Squyres
Steve Squyres, Cornell University professor of astronomy and the scientific Principal Investigator for the Mars Rover Mission, will address NCURA members during the opening keynote session at the 50th Annual Meeting on November 3, 2008.
Professor Squyres' research focuses on the large solid bodies of the solar system: the terrestrial planets and the satellites of the Jovian planets. His work involves analysis of data from both spacecraft and ground-based telescopes, as well as a variety of types of geophysical modeling. Areas of particular interest include the tectonics of Venus, the history of water on Mars, and the geophysics of the icy satellites of the outer planets. Data analysis and theory are used together to examine the processes that have shaped the surfaces and interiors of these bodies.
On June 10, 2003, the first Mars Exploration Rover (MER) spacecraft Spirit was launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. After a seven month flight, it entered the martian atmosphere in January 3, 2004. The second lander and rover, Opportunity, followed on January 24. Both rovers have revealed substantial evidence for liquid water at some time in the past at both sites. Opportunity early on found evidence of hematite, a mineral formed mostly in the presence of water, rock formations bearing chemical evidence of long-term water habitation, and physical evidence of water-formed rocks. Spirit had more difficulty, but eventually found evidence for water near Husband Hill, one of the hills named in honor of the lost Columbia astronauts.
Both Spirit and Opportunity have contributed a great deal of knowledge to our understanding of Mars, with the rovers doing everything from geology to astronomy, snapping the first picture of Earth from another planet. Much of the data has yet to be analyzed, and will surely yield even more discoveries.