Ashwin Vasavada [photo credit: Credit: Lance Hayashida/Caltech]
The 7:30 p.m. Watson Lecture, titled “Thirteen Years in the Dust: How a Robot Showed that Mars Was Once Habitable,” features Vasavada’s firsthand account of leading NASA’s Curiosity rover mission as project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Vasavada, who earned his doctorate in planetary science from Caltech in 1998, will share insights from the mission that has explored Mars since August 2012. The rover marked its 13th anniversary this past August while continuing to investigate Gale Crater for evidence of ancient habitable conditions.
“When you’re running one of these rover missions, it’s like an expedition that happened on Earth in the last 100 years,” Vasavada said. “We’re making daily zigzags and changes in real time to both our scientific goals as we discover things, and our actual path of exploration based on what the terrain allows us to do with the rover.”
The Curiosity mission seeks to determine whether Mars ever had the chemical ingredients for microbial life, including carbon, energy sources and liquid water. Recent software upgrades allow the rover to multitask—driving, taking photos, and transmitting data simultaneously while operating with improved energy efficiency.
The Watson Lecture Series, founded in 1922, serves as Caltech’s principal public science outreach program. Pre-lecture interactive exhibits begin at 6 p.m., with post-talk discussions following the main presentation.
“Thirteen Years in the Dust: How a Robot Showed that Mars Was Once Habitable” will run on Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 7:30 p.m. Beckman Auditorium, 332 S. Michigan Ave., Pasadena. For more information, call (626) 395-4652 or visit https://events.caltech.edu/calendar/watson-lecture-ashwin-vasavada. Ticket prices: Free.
