RESTON,
Va., July 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- AIAA is
pleased to announce the 2024 William H. Pickering Lecture,
"Europa Clipper: First NASA Mission to an Ocean World," by
Bonnie Buratti, Deputy
Project Scientist, Europa Clipper Mission, 31 July, 12 p.m. PT, during 2024 ASCEND, 30 July
– 1 August, Las Vegas.
Europa Clipper is NASA's first detailed
exploration of an ocean world, searching for life beyond
Earth.
As NASA's first detailed exploration of an ocean world with an
overarching goal of searching for a habitable zone, Europa Clipper
is scheduled to launch in 2024. Europa is one of Jupiter's four
moons discovered by Galileo in 1610. It almost certainly harbors a
salty ocean underneath a thick ice crust. This ocean has all the
requirements for a habitable zone where primitive life could
potentially thrive: liquid water, energy in the form of chemical
potentials, and organic molecules. Europa Clipper also will study
the geology, interior, and composition of Europa. Buratti's lecture
will showcase the mission's objectives and its role in the search
for life beyond Earth. This lecture will be delivered in person,
recorded, and available on demand.
Buratti is Senior Research Scientist, Principal, and Fellow at
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. An expert on planetary surfaces,
she has held leadership roles on several NASA flight projects,
including Cassini to Saturn and New Horizons to Pluto. She is a
recipient of the Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public
Communication and the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize for outstanding
lifetime achievement in the field of planetary science. She is an
elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American
Astronomical Society, and author of over 250 papers and the popular
book, Worlds Fantastic, Worlds Familiar (Cambridge).
Named for former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director
William H. Pickering, the
lectureship honors his initiation and leadership of America's
robotic scientific space program, from Explorer I in 1958 through
the development of the Viking Mars orbiters and the Voyager outer
planet and interstellar missions.
Registration for 2024 ASCEND is open; press
credentials are available here.
Contact: Rebecca
Gray, RebeccaG@AIAA.org, 804-397-5270 cell
About AIAA
AIAA is the world's largest aerospace technical society. With
nearly 30,000 individual members from 91 countries, and 100
corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and
government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space,
and defense. For more information,
visit www.aiaa.org, or follow AIAA
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and Instagram.
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SOURCE AIAA American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics