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Spring 2021

Speaker:	Joshua Knicely UAF Geophysical Institute
Title:	"How do we get to Hell? The Science and Engineering of Safely Landing  in Venusian Tesserae"
Date:	February 5, 2021
Time:	11:45am
Location:	Contact instructor for details. jemezger@alaska.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

³ÉÈËӰƬ:
Joshua Knicely, PhD student in Geophysics, UAF; studies volcanism and the near surface of Venus; only student participant of NASA’s Venus Flagship Mission (VFM) study

Abstract:                                                                                                                 
Venus is an extremely difficult target to study, but worth the effort. The tesserae, the highly tectonized and ancient highlands of Venus, will help constrain the conditions necessary for plate tectonics and habitability, as well as answer dozens of other long standing (and some new) scientific questions. But, they aren’t easy to get to. Our highest resolution imagery and topography are ~100 m/pixel and ~1-2 km/pixel; the surface boils at ~840F; and the surface is obscured by the cloud deck and atmospheric Rayleigh scattering until within a few kilometers of the tesserae. In this talk, we’ll discuss why we need to visit the tesserae, the hurdles we have to cross, and some of the ways in which landers and unmanned aerial vehicles will cross those hurdles and get the data that we need.

 Passcode: 8+vY19!t