Kavli: Live Google Hangout on New Horizons Mission to Pluto 26 August

During its flyby of Pluto last month, the New Horizons spacecraft obtained a treasure trove of scientific data, snapping by far the most detailed photographs ever taken of this mysterious object and its several moons. Instead of a cratered, barren orb, as some scientists expected, Pluto appears to be a startlingly dynamic world with soaring mountains and smooth plains of exotic ices.

On Wednesday, August 26, from 12:30 to 1:00 pm PDT (15:30 to 16:00 EDT; 19:30 to 20:00 UTC), join New Horizons team members Richard Binzel and Cathy Olkin, along with Kavli Prize Laureate Michael E. Brown, for a live Google Hangout webcast hosted by The Kavli Foundation. These planetary scientists will answer questions about the mechanisms that might be shaping Pluto’s landscape and what this strange new world can tell us about the other bodies at the solar system’s fringes.

RICHARD BINZEL is a Professor of Planetary Sciences and the MacVicar Faculty Fellow in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) department of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences, and a member of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI). He is a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission and has studied the Pluto-Charon system for 35 years.

CATHY OLKIN is a Principal Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) and a deputy project scientist for the New Horizons mission. Her planetary science interests include the study of the icy surfaces and tenuous atmospheres of outer solar system worlds.

MICHAEL E. BROWN is the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and the 2012 Kavli Prize Laureate in Astrophysics for his research on the Kuiper Belt. His research specialty is the discovery and study of bodies at the edge of the solar system.

Questions can be submitted ahead of and during this webcast by email to info@kavlifoundation.org, or send a message on Twitter with the hashtag #KavliLive.

Contact:
Adam Hadhazy
Astrophysics Writer/Editor
The Kavli Foundation
+1 443-994-0506
ahadhazy@kavlifoundation.org