“The Voyagers: Half a Century of Exploration” by Dr. Fran Bagenal
Summary:
NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft were launched in 1977 and flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Nearly half a century later, they are now about 5 times farther than Pluto from the Sun and are in the interstellar medium, having left the sphere of influence of the Sun – the Heliosphere. The Voyager mission opened our eyes to many different new worlds. This talk will present the glories of Voyager and discuss current and future exploration of the outer solar system.
Fran Bagenal Biography:
Dr. Fran Bagenal is a research scientist and professor emerita at the University of Colorado, Boulder and is co-investigator on NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Juno mission to Jupiter. Her main area of expertise is the study of charged particles trapped in planetary magnetic fields and the interaction of plasmas with the atmospheres of planetary objects, particularly in the outer solar system.
Born and raised in the UK, Dr. Bagenal received her bachelor degree from the University of Lancaster, England, and her doctorate degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences from MIT (Cambridge, Mass) in 1981. She has participated in several of NASA’s planetary exploration missions, including Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons and Juno.
Leave a Reply