NASA Talk Says It’s All New in Our Solar System

You say you want a revolution in planetary science?

On Tuesday, Dec. 7, at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, James Green, director, NASA Planetary Science will present “The Revolution in Planetary Science: New Worlds, New Discoveries,” at 2 p.m. in the Reid Conference Center. Green will review what NASA has learned on its journey through the Solar System and its hopes for future discoveries.

Media who wish to interview Green at a news briefing at NASA Langley at 1:15 p.m. on the day of the presentation should contact Chris Rink at 864-6786 or by e-mail at christopher.p.rink@nasa.gov by noon on the day of the talk for credentials and entry to the center.

That evening, Green will present a similar talk for the general public at 7:30 p.m. at the Virginia Air & Space Center in downtown Hampton. The evening presentation is free and no reservations are required.

Over the last few decades, NASA has sent robotic probes to all of the planets in the solar system except Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft launched on Jan. 19, 2006 will visit Pluto for the first time in 2015, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, asteroids and comets. Green will present additional discoveries to date on strange and puzzling worlds.

Earning his doctorate in space physics from the University of Iowa in 1979, Green began working in the Magnetospheric Physics Branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in 1980. At Marshall, he developed and managed the Space Physics Analysis Network that provided scientists all over the world with rapid access to data, to other scientists, and to specific NASA computer and information resources.

Green is the former head of the National Space Science Data Center at Goddard Space Flight Center, chief of the Space Science Data Operations Office, and chief of the Science Proposal Support Office. In August 2006, he became the director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters.

Green has written over 100 articles for science journals about various aspects of the Earth and Jupiter’s magnetospheres. He received the Arthur S. Flemming award given for outstanding individual performance in the federal government in 1998 and Japan’s Kotani Prize in 1996 in recognition of his international science data management activities.

For more information about NASA Langley’s Colloquium and Sigma Series Lectures: http://shemesh.larc.nasa.gov/Lectures/