Public Lecture: NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration and ESA's Aurora Program

dublin | sci-tech | event notice Tuesday September 19, 2006 23:46 by Star buff

Hosted by Astronomy Ireland

This is part of the continuing series of montly public lectures hosted by Astronomy Ireland

This lecture is titled: "NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration and ESA's Aurora Program"

Speaker: Kevin Nolan of the Planetary Society

Date/Time: Monday October 09 2006 at 8:00pm

To get tickets by post send cash cash/cheque/postal order/bank draft and a SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED (48cent) ENVELOPE to: Astronomy Ireland, P.O.Box 2888, Dublin 5.

Venue: Schrodinger Theatre, Fitzgerald Building, Trinity College, Dublin 2.
Near the Westland Row or Lincoln Place entrances (map: http://www.tcd.ie/Maps/tcd_east.html )

Admission: € 5 (€ 3 members and concessions)

Synopsis: For almost fifty years our ventures into space have been incredibly successful - sending people to the Moon, robotic reconnaissance of the Solar System and rovers to Mars, for example. But our aspirations (and the resulting challenges) of space exploration are rapidly expanding. With plans of a permanent Moon base by about 2020, deep space telescopes such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder and LISA and a human mission to Mars in 2033, space exploration must be pursued from here on in a fundamentally different way. In response, both NASA and ESA have developed and are already implementing far-reaching strategies to achieve such space exploration over the coming decades. This lecture provides an overview of those strategies, the resulting roadmaps, programs and planned missions to accomplish our goals. The lecture also explains how through ‘phased and synchronized’ priorities and milestones by both ESA and NASA; major projects such as sending to people to Mars (perhaps unachievable by any one organization) become politically, economically and socially viable.