Home
QR Code

Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, April 29, 2019 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

InSight mission logo

Betsy Pugel

"Behind the Scenes with the InSight Mars Lander"

ABSTRACT -- Join us on a journey from Integration and Test through to launch and landing on Mars for the Mars InSight Lander. InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on May 5, 2018 at 4:05 AM and landed on Mars on November 26, 2018 in Elysium Planitia. InSight was the first planetary launch from the West Coast and is the first Mars mission to attempt to measure Marsquakes. InSight is also poised to measure the thermal properties of Mars’ interior and the planet’s wobble. Enjoy an amazing photographic journey into the inner workings of life before launch and at landing on Mars.

SPEAKER -- Dr. Diane (Betsy) Pugel pursues innovation in a wide variety of applications and searches far and wide to work on interesting challenges for a broad range of agency missions. Since arriving at Goddard in 2002, she has thrived in environments where invention and collaboration are needed for resolving unique challenges. As the Deputy Instrument Project Manager and then Project Manager for the recently delivered Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer Mass Spectrometer (MOMA-MS), she was fully immersed in life-detection and planetary protection, which led her to NASA Headquarters, where she recently served for five years as the Deputy Planetary Protection Officer for the agency. While at Headquarters, she oversaw planetary protection compliance for 30+ missions in the Planetary Science Division portfolio, including InSight and its cubesat secondary payloads, Mars Cubesat One (MarCO). She has written over 16 refereed publications and coauthored a chapter on Ultraviolet devices. She is a past recipient of the Women in Aerospace Achievement Award . Dr. Pugel received her Ph.D. in experimental condensed matter physics at the University of Maryland. On a personal note, she wants you to know that from a systems engineering point of view, planetary protection’s goal to keep track of microbes is no different than mass, power or volume (excepting that you are tracking living organisms…).

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