June Monthly Meeting: Life and climate on Mars:  Past, present, and future

Location

Zoom + In-Person at First Evangelical Lutheran Church (803 3rd Ave, Longmont, CO 80501)

Summary

Mars is the closest planet to us that holds the potential to have had life in the past, to have it at the present, or possibly to have it in the future.  Bruce Jakosky will discuss the history of the climate and habitability of Mars, the current exploration program that has as a major goal searching for evidence of life, and the potential for a future climate to be able to support life. 

Bio

Bruce Jakosky has been a Mars researcher since being an undergraduate working on the Viking spacecraft mission in the 1970s.  He has been at the University of Colorado for more than 40 years, as a researcher and as a professor.  He has written more than 300 papers for the scientific literature, and is author or co-author of three books on life in the universe.  He led the MAVEN spacecraft mission to explore Mars’ upper atmosphere and climate evolution from its inception in 2003 through seven years of operation in orbit at Mars, and is now heavily involved in planning future Mars exploration.