Dishing Dirt on the Phoenix Lander
Next Astronomy Open House is Wednesday, July 16
“Sifting the Sands of Mars: Discoveries of the Phoenix Lander” is fertile subject matter for the next Astronomy Open House at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.
The program is free and open to the public and will be held at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 16, in 101 Otto Behrend Science Building. The lecture portion is suitable for a nontechnical audience and will be followed by astronomical observing from the college’s observatories, weather permitting.
“Phoenix has landed, this time near the Martian pole, where temperatures seldom reach as high as -80 degrees,” Darren Williams, associate professor of physics and astronomy and program presenter, says. “In the extreme cold and with little insulating atmosphere, water can only exist in the form of snow and ice and only underground. Since touchdown in May, Phoenix has used a robotic arm to furrow the surface and scoop samples of Martian soil. Simple chemistry experiments with the soil samples have verified what NASA scientists expected: that Mars was once warmer and covered by lakes and possibly seas of liquid water.”
Open House Nights in Astronomy are an outreach service of the Penn State Behrend School of Science; for more information, phone the school at 814-898-6105.