This Wednesday, January 21, astronomer Anthony Colaprete of NASA’s Ames Research Center will give a non-technical, illustrated talk on Prospecting for Water on the Moon: The Upcoming LCROSS Mission.

Sometime this year NASA will purposely crash two spacecraft into a permanently shadowed crater in one of the Moon’s polar regions. Yes, purposely.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission is to determine the presence or absence of water (ice and vapor), hydrocarbons and hydrated materials. The LCROSS mission is going to do this by directly impacting one of the permanently-shadowed regions near the moon’s pole and creating a crater, throwing debris and potentially water ice and vapor above the lunar surface.

The two main components of the LCROSS mission are the Shepherding Spacecraft and the Centaur upper stage rocket. The Centaur rocket will impact the moon causing a cloud of lunar debris. The Shepherding Spacecraft, which has scientific instruments on-board including cameras, will take pictures of the Centaur’s descent and impact into the moon. Four minutes later, the Shepherding Spacecraft follows almost the exact same path as the rocket, descending down through the big plume and analyzing it with special instruments. The Shepherding Spacecraft will then crash into the moon. This impact may be seen using an amateur telescope.

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Arrive early to locate parking.
Parking lots 1, 7 and 8 provide stair and no-stair access to the Smithwick Theater.

Smithwick Theater, Foothill College
12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills

Wednesday, January 21
7:00 pm

Admission: Free
Parking: $2.00

650-949-7888

The Cassini spacecraft has just entered its fifth year exploring the planet Saturn, its rings, and its large family of moons, including Titan.

This Wednesday astronomer Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute will give a non-technical, illustrated talk on Saturn’s Restless Rings: Latest Results from the Cassini Mission.

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft launched on October 15, 1997 began its 7-year journey to Saturn arriving on July 1, 2004.

The Cassini-Huygens program is an international cooperative effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian space agency, as well as several separate European academic and industrial contributors.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is the first to explore the Saturn system of rings and moons from orbit. The European Space Agency’s Huygens Probe landed on Titan in January 2005. Instruments on both spacecraft are providing scientists with vital data and the best views ever.

Cassini has been making numerous orbits of Saturn, flybys of Titan along with flybys of some of the other moons.

Saturn’s rings, believed to be made of pieces of shattered moons, comets and asteroids, are the most extensive and complex ring system in our solar system, extending hundreds of thousands of miles from the planet.

Dr. Mark Showalter, whose research focuses primarily on ring-moon systems, will share some of the pictures from Saturn and take a close-up look at the “lord of the rings.”

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Arrive early to locate parking.
Parking lots 1, 7 and 8 provide stair and no-stair access to the Smithwick theatre.

Smithwick Theater, Foothill College
12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills

Wednesday, November 12
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Admission: Free
Parking: $2.00

650-949-7888