Vlad Haltigin introduced the meeting’s guest speaker, his son, Tim Haltigin.

Tim gave an excellent presentation entitled ‘Rocks and Minerals: The oldest storytellers’.  Tim started the presentation by explaining that rocks are like time capsules, as they preserve bits of ancient air and can only be formed under certain conditions.  They are a key tool in the fields of astrobiology (is there life anywhere other than earth), and planetary science (how do planets form and change over time).

 

Tim then ‘launched’ (sorry, I couldn’t resist) into explaining the current mission to Mars, the objective of which is to bring rock samples from Mars back to Earth.  The rocket left earth in July 2020 and landed on Mars in Feb 2021.  This is an amazing feat as the rocket was travelling at 20,000 km/hr and had to decelerate to only a few km/hr in just 7 min (known as the ‘7 minutes of terror’) to land safely in Jezero Crater.  Scientists targeted a ‘delta’, as they are historically rich in life given the layers of sediment in them. 

 

The ‘Perseverance’ rover is packed with high tech equipment (e.g. supercam, rimfax, mastcam.2, MEDA, moxie, FIXL) to measure the light coming off of the rocks up to 10 meters away to determine the rocks’ composition.  Rock samples will be collected, put into a series of rockets, and then sent back to Earth.  Tim mentioned the rocks will be both analyzed, and also stored for future analysis as technology continues to improve.  For example, scientists are still making new discoveries on the rocks brought back from the moon in the 1970’s.  The samples from Mars will hopefully tell us more about the history of the solar system and help us to further understand Earth.

 

Tim explained that Mars is very desolate, dry, rocky and constantly being bombarded by radiation.  However, the planet used to be quite wet.  The atmosphere is only 1% as thick as Earth’s atmosphere. However, beneath the surface, water can be found.

 

At the end of his presentation, Tim answered a number of questions from club members including: is the rocket reusable (“no”), is terraforming possible on Mars (“yes, but only for short stays”), how far into the solar system can we go (“we are limited by the technology of how long it takes to travel in space … e.g. it takes 7+ months to get to Mars with current technology. Engineers are looking at in-space refueling”), how deep is the ice under the surface (“depends on where”), and has Elon Musk’s commercialization of space travel affected the space program (“yes, commercial companies have changed the game for the better.  Commercial companies take a lot more risk that the government approach.”)  Jody asked the final question of “How has the Mars mission changed your perspective of Earth?”  Tim replied that he now "looks at Earth as an integrated system, and how we are all inter-connected."

 

President Ken thanked Tim for his fascinating presentation on the mission to Mars, and for answering members’ questions.