Webinar: Lunar Trailblazer - A Caltech-led Pioneering Small Satellite for Lunar Water and Lunar Geology

Join Bethany Ehlmann, professor of planetary science at Caltech and research scientist at JPL, as she discusses Lunar Trailblazer, a Caltech-led and JPL-managed mission to send a small satellite to quantify and study water on the Moon.

Selected in June 2019 as one of NASA's first planetary science small satellite missions, Lunar Trailblazer will collect data to simultaneously measure composition, temperature, and thermophysical properties of the Moon's surface, providing maps of future candidate landing sites for robotic and human exploration. In addition to advancing space science, Lunar Trailblazer also pioneers a collaboration between Caltech and Pasadena City College to train students to perform mission team roles in design, build, and operations.

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Speaker

• Bethany Ehlmann is a professor of planetary science at Caltech and research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her research focuses on the mineralogy and chemistry of planetary surfaces, remote sensing techniques and instruments, astrobiology, and science policy and outreach. Her primary focus is unraveling Mars' environmental history and understanding the history of water in the solar system. She is PI of Lunar Trailblazer, a member of the science teams for the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), the CRISM imaging spectrometer on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, and the upcoming Mars 2020 rover. She is also on the Dawn orbiter team exploring the largest asteroid and dwarf planet Ceres, the EMIT space station-based imaging spectrometer to explore dust source regions, and is working to propose mission concepts for Europa, Venus, the Mars moons, asteroids and Earth.

This lecture is organized by the W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) , a joint think tank of the Caltech Campus and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).