Images: NASA, Cathy Olkin
Join the NASA Night Sky Network on Wednesday, August 18 at 6:00pm Pacific Time (9:00pm Eastern) to hear Dr. Cathy Olkin give an update on NASA's Lucy Mission to visit Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids.
NASA’s Lucy mission will be the first spacecraft to travel through the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Over the course of 12 years, one spacecraft will visit 7 Trojan asteroids and 1 Main Belt Asteroid. The mission is designed to flyby a large number of Trojan asteroids to understand the diversity of the Trojan asteroids and investigate how they came to be located in Jupiter's L4 and L5 Lagrange points. About Dr. Cathy Olkin
Cathy Olkin is a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO. Her main topic of research is the outer solar system, specifically planetary atmospheres and surfaces. She carries out ground-based observations to learn about the size and atmospheres of small worlds. She also works on NASA’s New Horizons mission as the lead of one of the scientific instruments, the color camera and composition mapper. NASA’s New Horizons mission provided us the first close up images of Pluto and its moons in 2015. In 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft made the most distant encounter of any solar system object, Arrokoth. Cathy is also the Deputy Principal Investigator for NASA’s Lucy mission. The Lucy mission will be the first spacecraft to visit the Trojan asteroids, asteroids that share an orbit with Jupiter.
In her free time, Cathy mentors FIRST robotics programs providing hands-on STEM education for students from 4th grade to 12th grade.
Night Sky Network members can join live, ask questions, and get up-to-date information about the resource. Members may register in advance for this webinar (login required) on the Outreach Resource page.
Public Viewing Options:
The event will stream live on YouTube.
Link: https://youtu.be/nGxP3k5LxFc
After the event, this recording will join past webinars featuring NASA Speakers on the NSN YouTube page.
Click here to see a list of all previous webinars
Upcoming Webinars (all webinars are at 6pm PT/9pm ET)
Public Links to Upcoming Webinars
Aug 18: Lucy Mission Update with Cathy Olkin
Sept 21: Dart Mission Update
Previous NSN Webinars
Images: NASA, Nicholeen Viall
NASA Night Sky Network joined us on Tuesday, July 20 at to hear Dr. Nicholeen Viall give an update on NASA's PUNCH mission to study the Sun's corona.
The Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, is hundreds of times hotter than the visible surface of the Sun below it. This super-hot coronal plasma (electrons and ions) expands outwards in all directions, accelerating up to millions of miles per hour, carrying part of the Sun’s magnetic field with it, and becoming the solar wind. The solar wind fills the solar system, constantly bombarding the planets with plasma and magnetic field. Additionally, the Sun has explosive releases of plasma and magnetic field called coronal mass ejections. These explosions can drive dynamics in Earth’s magnetic field, as well as create shocks and accelerate particles that can damage spacecraft and astronauts. The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) Mission is a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission to better understand these processes of how the energy of the Sun’s corona fills the solar system, and how coronal mass ejections evolve on their way to the Earth and other planets. We will describe the PUNCH mission and how it will answer these fascinating questions about our Sun and space environment.
All past webinars are also available on the NSN YouTube page.
Last Updated: July 23, 2021
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Night Sky Network (NSN) member clubs are dedicated to bringing the wonders of space and NASA science to folks across the USA.NSN program participation provides clubs with tools and resources to assist in their public outreach.
Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram for the latest NSN news and outreach photos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for recordings of monthly astronomy webinars and archives of our outreach toolkit demonstration videos. #NightSkyNetwork #AstronomyOutreach
Night Sky Network (NSN) member clubs are dedicated to bringing the wonders of space and NASA science to folks across the USA.NSN program participation provides clubs with tools and resources to assist in their public outreach. 
The NASA Night Sky Network is managed by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The ASP is a 501c3 non-profit organization advancing science literacy through astronomy.