ONLINE – General Meeting – August 2021

TAAA’s next general member meeting will be held on Friday, August 6, 2021, and available online. The Main Presentation starts at 6:30 P.M and is open to the public. A Members Only Meeting will follow. Non-members may attend the Main Presentation via Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/TucsonAstronomy/.  Members should attend the meeting via Zoom.

6:30 pm – Main Presentation

Title:  Preparing for Artemis: Understanding the Moon’s most important resource

Presentation:  Dr. Casey Honniball, from Goddard Space Flight Center is featured in this pre-recorded presentation about NASA’s Artemis program given to the Night Sky Network in May 2021. NASA’s Artemis program will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon. Innovative technologies will allow the Artemis crew to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. A sustainable presence on the lunar surface requires in-depth knowledge of the Moon’s available resources. Perhaps the most important of these is water. In preparation for Artemis, the lunar water cycle is being studied to understand the source, transport and retention of water across the Moon. Dr. Honniball will discuss how we study water on the Moon from Earth-based observatories and how water may be used in future Artemis missions.

Presenter:  Dr. Casey Honniball is a research fellow in the NASA Postdoctoral Program at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Her current research focuses on characterizing water on the Moon and testing field portable instruments for use by astronauts during an extravehicular activity on planetary surfaces. She earned her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science from the University of Hawaii in 2019. Recently Dr. Honniball and her team announced the direct detection of water molecules on a sunlit portion of the Moon using the air-borne telescope SOFIA. Since then, she has made numerous media and outreach appearances to talk about lunar water.

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