Sverdrup Lecture, 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 16, Hoversten Chapel

Title: MESSENGER at Mercury: Solving the riddles of the innermost planet in our solar system

Abstract: Because the planet Mercury is so much closer to the Sun than the Earth it is hard to observe with telescopes and difficult to reach with spacecraft, and is the least explored of the terrestrial planets. On 18 March 2011 NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft became the first ever to orbit Mercury. After overcoming numerous challenges and a journey of nearly 5 billion miles, MESSENGER trained its cameras and other instruments on the planet and revealed immense lava flows that would cover half of the United States, landscapes littered with hollowed depressions each the size of a small city, and evidence for bombardment of the surface by furious blasts of charged particles.

Sverdrup Student Convocation, 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, April 17, Hoversten Chapel

Title: Exploration as a Moral Imperative

Abstract: Humankind is inquisitive by nature and this impulse has played a critical role in technical advances throughout our history as a species from the development of agrarian societies to the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, and the explosion of formal scientific inquiry. Should we understand this capacity as something more than an accidental trait that gives humans a competitive advantage? Does the health of civilization depend on communal enterprises of creativity and discovery? Does the religious understanding of creation and life as more than incidental imply a moral imperative to create and explore?

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Among these scientists are two Augsburg physics graduates — Brian Anderson ’82 and George Ho ’91. Both work at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), which serves as the manager of the Mercury MESSENGER project for NASA.

Anderson is on the mission’s core team; he is a deputy project scientist and oversees the orbital operations planning to ensure that observations from all of the instruments are coordinated to meet the mission objectives. He is also a MESSENGER co-investigator for the work of the Magnetometer, one of seven scientific instruments on the spacecraft. This will measure the strength and variations of Mercury’s magnetic field, constantly collecting field samples.

Ho is an instrument scientist for another of the spacecraft’s instruments, the Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer (EPPS), which measures the mix and characteristics of the charged particles in the planet’s magnetic field.

The goal of MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is to better understand Mercury, the planet with the oldest surface. It has been more than 30 years since data was sent from the Mariner spacecraft as it journeyed past Mercury but never orbited around it.

MESSENGER’s successful entry into orbit was reached after a journey of 4.9 billion miles. The spacecraft was launched on August 3, 2004, and followed a path to Mercury that included a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three of Mercury before inserting itself into orbit last week. MESSENGER will remain in orbit one Earth year sending back data before returning. Its instruments were started up and testing began on March 24, with data transmittal set to begin on April 4.

To learn about the Mercury MESSENGER mission, go to .

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Anderson’s participation in the exploration of Mercury is the latest product of Augsburg’s long tradition of space-science excellence. It began in 1970, when Augsburg alumnus Ken Erickson returned to Minneapolis to take up a joint appointment as an Associate Professor of Physics at Augsburg and as a

researcher in the space physics laboratory of Professor John Winckler of the

University of Minnesota. Since then, an increasing number of Augsburg physics students have participated each year in research projects with Augsburg faculty.

Those research projects have ranged from building instruments to rocket into the aurora borealis (northern lights) to data analysis from satellites to studying the hot, thin plasma that surrounds the Earth. Professor Mark Engebretson says, “Augsburg Physics faculty and students are currently supported by seven space physics grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation totaling over $1,400,000.”

To celebrate Augsburg’s work in the sciences, including the space sciences, Johan Sverdrup and the Minnesota Space Grant College Consortium began the Sverdrup Visiting Scientist Program in 1990. This program brings in scientists to present their research to the community on a wide range of topics, from oceanography to renewable energy to space medicine. This year, Dr. Steve Squyres (pictured above) — Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University — will present his research on the large, solid bodies of the solar system. He has participated in a number of planetary spaceflight missions since 1978, and he is currently the scientific principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Project.

Befitting Augsburg’s space science programs, Dr. Squyres will present a lecture, “Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet” on April 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hoversten Chapel. Then, on April 15, he will host the Sverdrup Convocation at 11 a.m. in the Hoversten Chapel, with a topic called “Exploration of the Solar System: Past, Present, and Future.”

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