Dark, narrow streaks on Martian slopes such as these at Hale Crater are inferred to be formed by seasonal flow of water on contemporary Mars. The streaks are roughly the length of a football field. Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.
AMES, Iowa -- It's been nearly two years since NASA provided strong evidence confirming what had long been suspected — liquid water flows on present-day Mars. Planetary scientist and NASA researcher Essam Heggy will discuss current and future quests for water in the solar system in a talk at Iowa State University.
Heggy will present "Water Exploration in the Solar System: The Restless Hunt for Life" at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 12, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. His public talk is free.
NASA's 2015 announcement of its breakthrough discovery forever changed perceptions of the red planet and the search for life in space. Heggy will discuss methods being used to explore possible subsurface aquifers and ice deposits on Mars, as well as current and future plans of NASA and the European Space Agency to probe subsurface water on the red planet and Jupiter's icy moons.
Heggy is a planetary scientist at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering and a Rosetta co-investigator at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is a member of several science teams conducting experiments on board the ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter and Rosetta Mission; the Chandrayaan-1, India’s first lunar mission; and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Heggy previously was a research scientist in the Radar Science Group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and visiting associate in geology at the California Institute of Technology. He was an associate professor of geophysics at the Institute of Earth Physics in Paris, and a visiting scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Center and the Lunar Planetary Institute in Houston.
His presentation is co-sponsored by the College of Engineering, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Egyptian Student Association and the Committee on Lectures, which is funded by Student Government.
More information on ISU lectures is available online, or by calling 515-294-9935.