January Monthly Meeting: “The Hunt for the Pale Blue Dot: Science, Technology, and People for NASA’s Search for Habitable Planets”

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

Summary

In the past three decades, astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 extrasolar planets, changing our understanding of Earth’s place in the Universe. We are now poised to begin the search for Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars, our first true attempt to find “Earth 2.0” and to conduct a census of nearby stars to understand how common life is beyond the solar system. In this talk, Dr. France will discuss work ongoing at NASA and at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics to advance this search. Dr. France will talk about NASA’s upcoming “life finder” mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, and talk about the projects CU is undertaking today to enable this mission. As examples, he will focus on the CUTE small satellite that is studying evaporating planets around nearby stars, how CU rocket missions are advancing instrument technology, and how we incorporate students into these activities to train and mentor the scientists and engineers that will lead NASA’s search for habitable planets over the next two decades.

Bio

Kevin France is a professor at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at CU Boulder. He is an expert on space instruments for astrophysics and the study of extrasolar planets. He had led approximately 10 NASA rocket and small satellite missions at LASP, works extensively with the Hubble Space Telescope, and is engaged with the development of NASA’s future observatories to find habitable planets beyond the solar system.