Friday, October 21, 2005

Dr. William Welsh

Dept of Astronomy, SDSU

"The Mars Exploration Rover Mission"

2:00 pm in room P-148

Abstract: NASA/JPL's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project has been an extremely successful mission. Having landed on the surface of Mars in January 2004, the twin rovers continue to function at this time, well beyond their primary 92-day mission. The main science objective of these twin "robotic field geologists" was to determine the geologic history at the landing sites and to determine what role, if any, liquid water played in that geology. The MER craft have successfully accomplished their mission goals and it is believed that at least one of the landing sites would have been wet enough to be suitable for life - at least for a short while. In my talk I will present a general overview of Mars, the motivation for the MER mission, and a summary of MER's activities and discoveries.