Astronomer Steven Squyres to Speak at Brookhaven Lab on 'Science Results from the Mars Exploration Rover Mission,' October 5

September 11, 2007

Steven Squyres

UPTON, NY - Steven Squyres, a scientist with the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, will speak on "Science Results from the Mars Exploration Rover Mission" at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory on Friday, October 5, at 4 p.m. in the Laboratory's Berkner Hall. The talk is sponsored by Brookhaven Science Associates, the company that manages Brookhaven Lab, to bring topics of general interest before the Laboratory community and the public. The lecture is free and open to the public. Visitors to the Laboratory age 16 and over must bring a photo ID.

NASA launched two Mars Exploration Rovers, on June 10 and July 7, 2003, primarily to probe the history of water on the red planet. After landing on Mars in January 2004, the robots began to explore the planet. One of the most important scientific goals of the mission was to find and identify a variety of rocks and soils that provide evidence of the past presence of water on the planet. To obtain this information, Squyres is studying the data obtained on Mars by several sophisticated scientific instruments. In his talk, he will discuss his conclusions about water on Mars and other observations about the nature of the planet.

Steven Squyres earned a B.S. in geology and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Cornell University in 1978 and 1982, respectively. He joined NASA Ames Research Center, where he worked as a postdoctoral associate and research scientist for five years, returning to Cornell in 1987 as a faculty member. Currently, he is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell.

Squyres has participated in many planetary spaceflight missions, including the Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn and the Magellan to Venus. He was a member of the Mars Observer team and a co-investigator on the Russian Mars '96 mission. In addition to his current position on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Squyres is also co-investigator for the Mars Express mission, a member of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment team, as well as a member of the Mars Odyssey mission and the Cassini mission to Saturn.

Squyres received the H.C. Urey Prize from the Amercian Astronomical Society in 1987, and the Carl Sagan Memorial Award in 2004. In 2007, he was awarded the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science. Squyres is the author of Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet, published in 2005.

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