Tuesday, March 11
free admission
 
Millennium Library: noon
Planetarium: 7:00pm

Dr. Victoria Hipkin of the Canadian Space Agency will give a presentation on the Canadian instruments on the Phoenix Mars lander. Phoenix will land later this May. The presentation will be given twice the same day: noon at the Library, and evening at the Planetarium.

Canada will plant the Maple Leaf on the surface of the Red Planet when Phoenix, an international mission to Mars, touches down in 2008.

Mars is a cold, desert-like planet with a thin, carbon-dioxide atmosphere. Its atmospheric pressure is too low for liquid water on its surface.

Recently, large amounts of subsurface ice appear to have been detected in the northern plains. Phoenix will investigate this intriguing discovery. The lander’s robotic arm will dig into the permafrost, scooping up samples for analysis on board.

Canada is contributing a weather station to record local conditions and will probe clouds, fog and dust in the lower atmosphere with a light detection and ranging (or lidar) instrument. In the long-term, weather reports from the Martian arctic will help scientists accurately model the history and future of climate change on the Red Planet.

Dr. Victoria Hipkin Program Scientist, Planetary Exploration Canadian Space Agency   Dr. Vicky Hipkin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1995 with an MSc in Remote Sensing and Image Processing, and from the University of Leeds in 2000 with a PhD on Antarctic atmospheric boundary layer dynamics. She worked in New Zealand on atmospheric instrumentation, and arrived at the University of Toronto in 2001 to work with Prof. Jim Drummond to define an atmospheric and geological mission to Mars. She was employed by the Canadian Space Agency in 2005.