Cornell scholar to discuss interplanetary exploration
Steven Squyres, Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University, will give the 2010 Strock Lecture at Skidmore College titled "Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet," at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 24.
Free and open to the public, the event will take place in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. A reception will follow.
Dr. Squyres' research focuses on the robotic exploration of planetary surfaces, the history of water on Mars, geophysics and tectonics of icy satellites, tectonics of Venus, planetary gamma-ray and x-ray spectroscopy. He is best known for research of the history and distribution of water on Mars and of the possible existence and habitability of a liquid water ocean on Europa. In January 2004, twin robotic explorers named Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars. Expected to last for 90 days, the two rovers have now been exploring the Martian surface for more than six years. Their objective is to search for evidence of past water on Mars, and to determine if Mars ever had conditions that would have been suitable for life.
To develop Spirit and Opportunity, a team of more than 4,000 engineers and scientists overcame a host of technical challenges that were multiplied by an extraordinarily tight schedule, which was driven by the motions of the planets. Dr. Squyres is the scientific principal investigator of the team. His talk will provide an up-to-date summary of the missions of Spirit and Opportunity, from their initial conception through their development, launch, landing, and operations on the surface of Mars.
Dr. Squyres, a specialist in planetary sciences, has participated in a number of planetary spaceflight missions dating back to the Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn launched in 1978, and including the Magellan mission to Venus, the Russian Mars '96 mission, the Mars Express mission, and the Cassini mission to Saturn, among others.
Skidmore's annual Lester W. Strock Lecture was endowed by the late Dr. Lester W. Strock, a Pennsylvania-born geochemist and the world's foremost authority on Saratoga's mineral springs. Strock, who died in 1982, spent much of his distinguished career in research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and with the Sylvania Electric Co.
