Join the NASA Night Sky Network on Thursday, October 29 at 6:00pm Pacific Time (9:00pm Eastern) to hear Dr. Kathy Campbell explore the what, how and why in the quest for ET life in the Solar System in the current and coming decades.

Little Green (Wo)Men are out; microbes are in. The search for life beyond Earth has recently accelerated since the lull following the Mars Viking missions in the 1970’s. Both the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ and Icy Worlds are receiving intense scrutiny. This talk will explore what, how and why in the quest for ET life in the Solar System in the current and coming decades. 

About Kathy Campbell
Professor Kathy Campbell is a geologist and astrobiologist who investigates extreme environments as analogs for early life on Earth and possible life on Mars. She studied at UCSC, University of Washington, USC and NASA Ames Research Center before joining The University of Auckland in New Zealand in 1997. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Ap rangi, and is founding Director of Te Ao M rama – Centre for Fundamental Inquiry, a transdisciplinary research center exploring the origin and evolution of the Universe and its life. Kathy was a senior research fellow at the Le Studium Institute for Advanced Studies (Orléans, France, 2014), and a distinguished lecturer in international astrobiology schools in Spain (2016) and Thailand (2019). In NASA's Mars 2020 landing site selection, her team's proposal was chosen in the final three, with the aim to collect samples of possible Martian biosignatures from a >3 billion year old hot spring at Columbia Hills in Gusev Crater, and their eventual return to Earth in a future mission. 

 

On Thursday, September 17, the NASA Night Sky Network heard Dr. Emily Levesque share the science and adventures behind what it's like to be a professional astronomer and work at the world's cutting-edge observatories.

How can we photograph a black hole? Can we find one star hidden inside another? What will the next generation of telescopes reveal about the cosmos? In this webinar I'll share the science and adventures behind what it's like to be a professional astronomer and work at the world's cutting-edge observatories. We'll learn about how modern observatories are run, hear some of the many incredible behind-the-scenes stories of life as a professional astronomy, and map the rapid technological expansion of our field, the new possibilities offered by tomorrow's telescopes, and the evolving role of humans as observers and scientists.
 
About Dr. Emily Levesque

Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington, studying how the most massive stars in the universe evolve and die. She has observed for upward of fifty nights on many of the planet’s largest telescopes and flown over the Antarctic stratosphere in an experimental aircraft for her research. Her academic accolades include the 2014 Annie Jump Cannon Award, a 2017 Alfred P. Sloan fellowship, a 2019 Cottrell Scholar award, and the 2020 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT and a PhD in astronomy from the University of Hawaii.

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.