Lectures

Frontiers in Science Lecture Series

Presented by the Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellows 

Free admission. . .bring a friend!

Exploring Mars with Curiosity and its Laser

Roger Wiens
Los Alamos National Laboratory

On August 6, 2012, the one-ton Curiosity rover was lowered to the Martian soil by a ‘Sky Crane’, settling on its own six wheels. Curiosity sports 10 instruments, an arm that weighs as much as a whole previous generation Mars rover, and a laser that vaporizes bits of rock up to 25 feet away to determine their compositions. The setting for its travels is 90 mile-wide Gale crater and the ultimate destination is a 3-mile high mountain of Martian sedimentary layers. This talk will describe the rover, its journey to Mars, and Curiosity's new discoveries.

Four presentations in northern New Mexico:

Los Alamos

Tuesday, May 7 at 7 p.m.
Duane W. Smith Auditorium
Los Alamos High School, Los Alamos
(map)

Albuquerque

Thursday, May 9 at 7 p.m.
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
1801 Mountain Road NW, Albuquerque
(map)

Santa Fe

Tuesday, May 14 at 7 p.m.
James A. Little Theater
New Mexico School for the Deaf
1060 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe
(map)

Taos

Thursday, May 16 at 7 p.m.
Taos Convention Center
120 Civic Plaza Drive, Taos
(map)

Roger Wiens is the leader of the ChemCam laser experiment on Curiosity. He started studying the Red Planet when he was 12. He has been at Los Alamos National Laboratory building NASA instruments since 1997, developing the Genesis spacecraft which was the first to return to Earth from beyond the Moon. In 2004 NASA selected his ChemCam proposal for Curiosity, and he has led the US-French team through development, testing, and now exploration of the Red Planet.

Bring your copy of Roger's book Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, from Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity for him to autograph after the talk. All royalties go to Habitat for Humanity.

For more information, please contact Linda Anderman in the Communications Office at 665-9196 or 667-7000.