Venus Mission, Search for Life Lectures at Virginia Air & Space Center

Advances in the search for life beyond Earth, as well as discussion of a mission to Venus, will be the subject of public two lectures Wednesday, April 8, from 7:15 to 9:15 p.m. at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Europe’s first mission to Venus will be the subject of the first talk, by Hakan Svedhem of the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. Svedhem will summarize the Venus Express mission and discuss scientific highlights, including how the solar system works and why Venus is so different from Earth.

Venus Express was launched from Kazakhstan in November of 2005 and arrived at the planet in April of 2006. It orbited Venus for more than eight years before running out of fuel in November of 2014.

Search for life

In the second talk, James L. Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, will discuss advances in the search for life beyond Earth. Understanding how solar systems are made and evolve holds clues to finding worlds that may be inhabited by complex life.

Green’s lecture will discuss recent advances to help determine if we are truly alone in our galaxy, and where NASA is looking to find out.

For more information about the lectures, go to http://vasc.org/events/planetary-science-public-lecture or contact Upendra Singh, of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, at (757) 897-2030 or upendra.n.singh@nasa.gov

For more information about Langley go to http://www.nasa.gov/langley