FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 2, 2004
FY04-54
"Discoveries of the Mars Exploration Rovers" Presented Tuesday Evening at Pollard
OAK RIDGE, Tenn.—Is there life on Mars? Don't miss the man with answers as Dr. Hap McSween speaks about his partnership with NASA to explore the surface of Mars.
A professor of planetary geoscience at the University of Tennessee’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, McSween will present “Discoveries of the Mars Exploration Rovers” Tuesday, September 7, at 6 p.m. at Pollard Technology Conference Center, 210 Badger Avenue.
McSween specializes in planetary geology. For the past 25 years NASA has funded his research on meteorites, as he and his students have published more than a hundred scientific papers dealing with meteorites and their implications for understanding how this influences the solar system.
He began participating in NASA spacecraft missions in 1997 as a member of the science team for Mars Pathfinder, continuing with the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey spacecrafts. He is now a co-investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers launched in 2003 and the Dawn asteroid orbiter now in development.
To learn more about the progress and discoveries of the Mars Exploration Program, visit http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/. More information about the UT Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is available on the group’s Web site at http://geoweb.gg.utk.edu.
As always, all lectures in the Summer Science Series are free of charge and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is a university consortium leveraging the scientific strength of 91 major research institutions to advance science and education by partnering with national laboratories, government agencies, and private industry. ORAU manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the U.S. Department of Energy.