Dawn – Exploring the Asteroids Vesta and Ceres
Professor Hap McSween
Oak Ridge Civic Center, The Craft Room
February 2, 2011 at 7:00 P.M.
Abstract: The talk will address various aspects of the NASA/JPL Dawn Mission: Journey to the Asteroid Belt, which was launched a few years ago (September 2007). It will rendezvous with the asteroid Vesta this summer (August 2011) and then the dwarf planet Ceres in a few years (February 2015). Their study should reveal details about the dominant processes governing the formation of our early solar system. See the NASA mission page for more details about the mission.
Author’s Biography: Chancellor’s Professor Hap McSween has been a member of the UK faculty for 33 years. He holds degrees from The Citadel, the University of Georgia, and Harvard University. He previously served as Head of the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences and is now Interim Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the namesake for an asteroid.
Unlike most geologists, Dr. McSween’s attention is drawn to rocks falling from the heavens rather than to those already underfoot. For three decades NASA has funded his research on meteorites, and he has published hundreds of scientific papers dealing with meteorites and their implications for understanding the formation and evolution of the solar system. He is also involved in spacecraft missions – currently as co-investigator for two Mars rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, and the Dawn asteroid orbiter.
He is particularly interested in communicating the excitement of science to the public, and he is the author of three popular books on planetary science, as well as textbooks in geochemistry and cosmochemistry.
