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AstroNights LIVE: Mars 2021 featuring Maya Nasr

Friday, February 19, 7:00pm 

Recording will also be available on our Youtube Channel after the event.

Program Description:

We're back with even more MOXIE! MOXIE (the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment) is an instrument aboard the Perseverance Rover, that was developed through a collaboration led by MIT (view Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman's October presentation here). This month, just as the Perseverance Rover is wrapping up its interplanetary journey to Mars, we are joined by another member of the MOXIE Team. Maya Nasr is a PhD student in the Aerospace Engineering department at MIT, working with Professor Hoffman on MOXIE. Maya is also the Policy Lead and the Congressional Legislation Lead for the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) Space Law & Policy Project Group. Her work in the field of space policy includes issues related to space disarmament and peaceful use of outer space. In addition to Maya's presentation, we'll take a look at Mars in the night sky and of course take your questions related to Mars, the Mars 2020 Mission, MOXIE and more!

Maya will be joined by fellow AeroAstro graduate student and MOXIE team member Eric Hinterman.

About AstroNights:

AstroNights is a live, family-friendly exploration of your night sky that you can join from the comfort of your home. View live on YouTube or join the Zoom Webinar for extra interactive features! Our educators leave audiences with simple advice for observing your real night sky when the program is over. From the colorful characters in our own solar system to the weird and wonderful things far beyond, each program is sure to contain something of interest to armchair astronomers of all ages. Monthly each 3rd Friday. Click here for more information about past AstroNights events, including how to access recordings.

Resources

Learn about our guest speakers Maya and Eric in this article from the MIT News. And more about Maya here.

MIT-Haystack’s MOXIE Page - The official page for the MIT-Haystack Observatory MOXIE Team. MOXIE is a collaboration between MIT’s Haystack Observatory, MIT’s Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. Teamwork makes the dream work!

Mars 2020 STEM Toolkit - Bring the exciting engineering and science of the Mars 2020 mission to students in the classroom and at home with STEM lessons and do-it-yourself projects covering a variety of STEM topics

3D Rover - Explore a 3D model of the newest Mars rover Perseverance

NASA’s Mars Exploration Program - The Perseverance rover is just the latest of NASA’s missions to Mars. How have we tried to explore the Red Planet?

NASA’s Perseverance page - All about the rover on its way to Mars. Make sure you don’t miss the incredible landing animations!

The Science of Perseverance - A really cool video that talks about the science Perseverance will do on Mars (3 minutes)

Ingenuity - There is a helicopter on its way to Mars! Learn about how it will work (includes activities for kids).

Planetary Radio - An excellent Planetary Radio podcast episode about MOXIE featuring Michael Hecht, MOXIE Principal Investigator and Associate Director of MIT’s Haystack Observatory

The links below include resources mentioned during the program, suggested follow-up activities, and more!