Venus Revealed: the Past, Present and Future Exploration of Earth’s Twin Planet

Presented by Dr. David Grinspoon

RASC Calgary Centre

Summary:
From the beginning of history, Venus, the brightest planet in the sky, has been an object of human worship and wonder. In the space age it has become a destination for exploration – the nearest other planet to Earth – and a likely example of a once Earth-like planet with a climate that has evolved in a very different direction.  Beneath the cloudy atmosphere lies a volcanic surface with many intriguing parallels to the geology and climate of our own world. Recent models results suggest that Venus may have had a habitable surface environment for much of its history. When, how and why did Venus change from a more Earthlike place to the hot, forbidding world that we find today? Could there have been life there at one time, and what might have happened to it when the climate changed so drastically? Several new spacecraft missions to Venus have recently been selected for flight in the coming decade, so we will soon have new ways to test these ideas about our still-mysterious neighbor planet.

Bio:
David Grinspoon, Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, is an astrobiologist who studies the possible conditions for life on other planets and the human influence on Earth. He has been on spacecraft teams for several interplanetary missions. In 2013, he served as inaugural NASA Chair in Astrobiology at the United States Library of Congress. He is the author of several popular books and has been awarded the Carl Sagan Medal for Public Communication of Planetary Science by the American Astronomical Society. He has appeared widely on television and radio and acted as frequent co-host for StarTalk Radio. Currently he is a Co-Investigator on NASA’s upcoming DAVINCI mission to Venus.
 

This talk is on January 20th, 2022 @ 7:30 pm MST (9:30 om EST)

Join the talk via Zoom HERE!

Passcode: 424643