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NASA Talk: Advanced Materials and Technologies for NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission and Beyond
July 31, 2020 @ 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Talk with NASA Aerospace Engineer Dr. Lauren Abbott
Friday, July 31
8-9 p.m.
Free, RSVP on Facebook
Join NASA Aerospace Engineer Dr. Lauren Abbott on Facebook Live for a closer look at the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover and the technologies that enable Perseverance to make the journey to Mars! NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission is targeted to launch soon in the window from July 30 to August 15, 2020. It will land the Perseverance rover in Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. Perseverance boasts a sophisticated design with a suite of cutting-edge instruments that will allow it to tackle some ambitious science goals: (1) seek potential biosignatures or signs of past microbial life and (2) characterize the planet’s climate and geology looking for evidence of ancient habitable environments. But what technologies are needed to get to Mars?
We will overview the technologies that enable Perseverance to make the roughly 7-month journey to Mars, staring with the launch on an Atlas V-541 rocket and ending with the landing of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars using the sophisticated Entry, Descent, and Landing System. We will then take a closer look at the thermal protection materials that make up the spacecraft’s heat shield, which keep the spacecraft and rover safe during entry into Mars’ atmosphere. Lastly, we will take a peek at a few of the materials challenges that lay ahead for the future of Mars exploration.
About Dr. Lauren Abbott
Dr. Lauren Abbott is an Aerospace Engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. She uses computational modeling and simulation to investigate and design advanced materials for the extreme environments encountered in space exploration. Some of her recent research has related to thermal protection materials for heat shield technologies used in atmospheric entry, as well as high-temperature protective coating materials for advanced space propulsion technologies. Dr. Abbott obtained dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Mathematics and Physics at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in Materials Science and Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University. In her free time, she volunteers with the Space Cookies VEX Robotics Team, a Girl Scouts robotics troop for 6th to 12th grade girls, hosted at the NASA Ames Research Center.
To receive a notification when the talk begins, make sure to “Like” the Chabot Space and Science Center Facebook page.
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