The future is calling in the form of outer-space exploration Nov. 16 and four regional high schools ”” Notre Dame of Fairfield, Newtown and Stratford high schools and Henry Abbott Technical High School in Danbury ”” are answering the countdown.
- Steve Howell, space scientist for NASA’s Kepler Mission and keynote speaker for the Nov. 16 SCSU astronomy forum, “Missions Possible: A Manned Flight to Mars, & Finding ‘New Earths’ in the Milky Way Galaxy.”
Two solar corona-hot topics in astronomy ”” NASA”™s plans for a manned mission to Mars and the Kepler mission, in which NASA is seeking to identify Earthlike plants outside our solar system ”” are on the docket for the event, which is titled, “Missions Possible: A Manned Flight to Mars & Finding ”˜New Earths”™ in the Milky Way Galaxy.”
The forum will be held 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. in the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts on the Southern Connecticut State University Campus in New Haven, with science students from the four regional high schools”™ science programs attending.
Steve Howell, a scientist for NASA’s Kepler Mission, will be the keynote speaker.
University officials noted Ridley Scott’s “The Martian,” now out five weeks, continues its hold on the box office and “has ramped up interest in Mars.”
There will be a panel discussion and question-and-answer period featuring Elliott Horch, professor of physics at SCSU and an astrophysicist who developed a telescopic device used during the Kepler Mission; Jim Fullmer, associate professor of earth science at SCSU, whose background is both meteorology and stellar astronomy; and Tabetha Boyajian, post-doctoral fellow at Yale University and a member of the citizen astronomy organization, the “Planet Hunters.”
The forum website is: southernct.edu/special/astronomyforum.html.
