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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, October 15, 2007 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

photo of speaker and Mars rover

Geoffrey Landis

"Planetary Exploration: Mars, Venus, and Beyond"

ABSTRACT -- The Mars Exploration Rovers mission marks only the beginning of in-depth exploration of the planets. This talk will start with the MER rovers, and go beyond to look at some future concepts for mobile exploration by both humans and robots. Beyond Mars, future exploration will look forward to the technical challenges of exploration of the surface and atmosphere of our sister planet Venus, and beyond Venus, into the solar system.

SPEAKER -- Geoffrey A. Landis is a scientist and a science fiction writer. As a scientist, he is researcher working at the NASA John Glenn Research Center. He works on projects related to advanced power and propulsion systems for space and planetary exploration. He has worked on topics ranging from propulsion systems for interstellar flight, beamed-power systems for space and terrestrial power, in-situ resource utilization throughout the solar system, and technology for exploring the surface of Venus. He is currently a member of the science team for the Mars Exploration rovers mission, which is directing the operation of two rovers, "Spirit" and "Opportunity" on the surface of Mars. He was a member of the Sojourner rover team on the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997. For 2005 and 2006, he was the Ronald E. McNair Visiting Professor of Astronautics at MIT. He holds seven patents, and is the author of 400 scientific papers on subjects ranging from interstellar travel to semiconductor physics.

As a writer, Geoffrey Landis won the Hugo award for best short story in 1992 for the story "A Walk in the Sun," and again in 2003 for the story "Falling onto Mars." He won the Nebula award in 1990 for "Ripples in the Dirac Sea". His novel Mars Crossing from Tor books won the Locus award for best first novel in 2001. His many science fiction stories have been translated into twenty-one languages, ranging from Chinese to Turkish. His short story collection Impact Parameter (and Other Quantum Realities) was published by Golden Gryphon Books. It was named as a notable book of 2001 by Publisher's Weekly.


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov