The annual World Space Week is the largest international celebration of space science and technology and their contributions to the betterment of the human condition. Find out more about it at http://www.worldspaceweek.org. "Remote Sensing: Enabling Our Future" is the theme of this year’s event and the museum is hosting three public talks by local experts.
Thursday, October 6 | 2 p.m.
40 Years on Mars: Celebrating The Viking Mission
Larry Crumpler, Ph.D. and Jayne Aubele, NMMNHS
The Viking Mission to Mars was the first time any spacecraft, from any nation, landed on Mars and used new techniques of remote sensing on another planet. This was a complex mission with two orbiters and two landers arriving at Mars in July and September, 1976. Crumpler and Aubele were graduate students in the geology department at UNM at the time. Their contributions as Viking Interns helped to make the mission a success, and they have been working “on Mars” ever since. Listen to the details about a successful mission that took place at the very beginning of our exploration of Mars. Amazingly, many of the techniques, tools, and data from Viking are still used today in our ongoing studies of Mars.
Larry Crumpler and Jayne Aubele are husband-and-wife geologists who have studied and mapped volcanoes on three different planets: on the ground on Earth, and remotely on Mars and Venus. They met as graduate students at UNM, published their first joint professional paper based on research during the Viking mission, and then spent nearly 20 years studying and working elsewhere while they tried to get back to what they say are the “best volcanoes on Earth,” right here in New Mexico. Larry is a Research Curator at the Museum and Jayne is the Museum Adult Programs Educator.