Pascal Lee Pensacola Evening lecture

Returning to the Moon and venturing on to Mars will be humanity’s greatest endeavors in space this century. Each destination offers amazing places to explore, profound science to conduct, potential resources to assess, a permanent human presence to establish, and a great future to imagine, plan and create. Although the destinations are clear, how these worlds should be explored, what science should be prioritized, where humans should land, what they should do first, what should be postponed til later, and what the longer vue future likely holds remain questions often left unanswered, or hastily addressed with flawed assumptions. This talk examines our current plans to return to the Moon and journey on to Mars, the challenges we face, the wonders that lie ahead, and important decisions to make.

Dr Pascal Lee is a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He is also professor of planetary sciences at Kepler Space University.

Pascal studied physics at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and holds an M.E. in engineering geology and geophysics from Polytech-Sorbonne. He went on to earn a MS and PhD in astronomy and space sciences from Cornell University where he was Carl Sagan’s last T.A. His research focuses on the Moon and Mars, in particular the history of water and ice, and planning the future human exploration of these worlds. Earlier this year, he and his student, Sourabh Shubham, announced the discovery of a previously unrecognized giant volcano on Mars, the Noctis Volcano.

Pascal has led over 30 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica to study Mars by comparison with the Earth. He wintered-over for 402 days at the French Antarctic base, Dumont d’Urville, and also led the Northwest Passage Drive Expedition – a record-setting vehicular drive across the Arctic along the fabled Northwest Passage, and now the subject of the award-winning motion picture documentary film, Passage To Mars.

Dr Lee is currently a member of the US National Academies’ steering committee on “A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars”. He is a recipient of the United States Antarctica Service Medal, the National Space Society Space Pioneer Award for Science and Engineering, the Space Frontier Foundation’s Vision to Reality Award, and the Sagan Prize for the Popularization of Science.

Host or Publisher Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition