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Mercury, Mars, Titan, the moon and Comet Tempel 1 will be spotlighted.

By University Communications
January 14, 2008

University of Arizona space scientists will highlight some of the latest discoveries in solar system exploration at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Public Evening Lecture Series, which starts Jan. 22.

The lecture series underscores the breadth of research undertaken by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, with UA faculty sharing insights from their explorations of Mercury, the moon, Mars, Saturn's giant moon, Titan, and even the spacecraft that smashed into a comet in 2005.

All lectures will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Room 308 of the Kuiper Space Sciences Building. Doors open at 7 p.m. All talks are free and open to the public.

The schedule of speakers and their topics:

• Jan. 22: "Radar on Titan: New Discoveries about Methane Lakes and Streams" by Jonathan Lunine, professor of physics and planetary sciences.

Instruments aboard the Cassini Orbiter have revealed that Saturn's giant moon, Titan, is a world of lakes, streams, mountains and, possibly, ice volcanoes. This lecture will focus on radar images that are giving scientists first-of-a-kind views of an exotic world that may yield insights about Earth's past and future.

• Feb. 26: "Scientific Results of NASA's Deep Impact Mission" by H. Jay Melosh, Regents' Professor of geosciences and planetary sciences.

On July 4, 2005, NASA deliberately collided a 700-pound spacecraft with comet Tempel 1 at a speed of 22,500 miles per hour. The object of this kamikaze mission was to find out what is below a comet's surface. Although the dust blown out by the impact obscured the final crater, the mission swept away old ideas about comets and revealed a new vision of cometary structure. This lecture will discuss the mission itself, some old ideas about comets and the new ideas that came from this daring experiment.

• March 25: "Mercury and the MESSENGER Mission: Preliminary Results from the First Flyby" by Robert Strom, professor emeritus of planetary sciences.

Mercury is the smallest planet but has the largest iron core with respect to its size of any planet in the solar system. The origin of that large core depends on ideas about the origin and early evolution of the terrestrial planets. This lecture will describe the MESSENGER mission's preliminary results for the unseen side from the spacecraft's Jan. 14 flyby, the first flyby in 31 years.

• April 22: "New Vistas of the Moon and Mars" by Alfred McEwen, professor of geosciences and planetary sciences.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is returning spectacular high-resolution, color, three-dimensional images of Mars. By late 2008 or early 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be launched, arriving at the moon three days later. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera will return images that are at as high resolution as those from HiRISE. This talk will discuss why scientists want to compare the high-resolution images of the moon and Mars. The moon is like a "control experiment" when it comes to showing the effects of impacts and volcanism on a dry planet, processes which also occur in the ice-rich crust of Mars.