The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2024
January 2024 - Spirit Knocked, Opportunity Rocked: 20 Years of Rovers on Mars
Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the landing of Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rovers.
February 2024 - SPHEREx: Zooming Out to See the Big Picture
The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) is a planned two-year mission that will survey the sky in optical as well as near-infrared light.
March 2024 - Mavericks of Mars: The Ingenuity Helicopter Team’s Favorite Flights
Join us for a live talk in which, through the framework of its pilots’ “Favorite Flights,” we’ll learn how Ingenuity’s team used resourcefulness and creativity to move beyond the helicopter’s initial mission.
April 2024 - Seeing Earth’s Coastlines: SWOT Satellite Provides Higher-Resolution Data than Ever
Join us for a live discussion with Dr. Ben Hamlington to learn how SWOT is #TrackingWorldWater to fill in our current gap of information regarding water at coastlines around the globe.
May 2024 - Shake & Bake: How Spacecraft Are Tested to Handle the Harsh Environment of Space
Join us for a live chat with two ETL experts who will teach us more about the equipment, the people behind environmental testing, and how they literally “shake and bake” spacecraft.
June 2024 - NASA in Your Home: How Space-Based Technology Improves Our Daily Lives
Join us for a live talk as we explore how space-based technology becomes a spinoff, including a deep dive on the NASA-designed and -built instrument at the heart of the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s first two satellites. Called Tanager-1 and Tanager-2, the satellites will pinpoint and measure methane and carbon dioxide sources in communities around the world from low-Earth orbit.
July 2024 - How NASA’s Team of Autonomous Mini Rovers Will Explore the Moon
Join us as we discuss the amazing potential of CADRE with project manager, Subha Comandur, and principal investigator, Dr. Jean-Pierre de la Croix.
August 2024 - Sulfur Crystals on Mars: Curiosity’s Happy Accident
Join us for a live conversation with Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist, to discuss the significance of the Curiosity Mars rover's recent discovery on Mars: yellow sulfur crystals.
September 2024 - Europa and Beyond: A Deep Dive into Ocean Worlds in Our Solar System
“Follow the water” has long been the mantra of astrobiologists in search of life in the universe, as H2O remains the fundamental building block of all life as we know it.
October 2024 - Lasers in Space! How NASA’s New Technology Could Revolutionize Deep Space Comms
Data transmission via laser (also known as optical comms) has the potential to revolutionize deep space communications by enabling ultra high-definition video and complex science data transfer across the solar system.
November 2024 - Fixing Voyager: How NASA Restored Communications with Voyager 1 from Across the Solar System
After more than four and a half decades exploring our solar system and beyond, Voyager 1 has had a challenging year.