PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE HELD IN THE VICTORIA HALL
Adventures in Martian deep time – tales from the Perseverance rover – Professor Sanjeev Gupta from Imperial College
We send robots to Mars in general to search for evidence for extraterrestrial life, in particular ancient life. This is not such an easy task. Crucial to this endeavour is finding the right rocks that might contain signature of ancient life. But how do we go about this? Sedimentary rocks are the ‘go to’ archives for this search. One of the goals of geologists exploring Mars with robots is to work out what the Martian landscape was like early in Mars’ history – deep time Mars – at a time when life is thought to have got going on Earth. Were ancient environments on Mars suitable for life to have formed, flourished and its evidence preserved in the rock record?
On February 18 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully landed at Jezero crater in a nail-biting landing sequence. The mission represents the most complex, capable rover ever sent to Mars. It is also the first step in a multi-stage campaign to return surface samples back to Earth in order to seek signs of ancient life on the red planet.
In this talk I will discuss the early adventures of the rover as it begins its geological exploration of Jezero crater.
We continue to manage events in the Victoria Hall with visitors’ safety in mind. Our measures include online booking, requesting that visitors wear masks and providing distanced seating. Hand sanitiser is available in the foyer. For this event, audience capacity in the hall will be reduced to allow for space between members of the audience. Thank you for respecting our requests and others’ sensibilities.
Free to all.
Please book by 1pm on the day of the event.