Is life on Mars possible?
What does it feel like to sit on the tip of a loaded rocket?
What does Jeffrey Hoffman think about private space missions and what does NASA think about it?
These and other questions dominated the post-lecture debate at the Breath of Mars and Space Exploration event, held on September 14, 2024 at the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science at Jagiellonian University. The large audience had the opportunity to speak directly with the speakers, including a very special guest – Jeffrey Hoffman, an American astronaut and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who has participated in five space shuttle missions and taken spacewalks.
The guest shared his unique experiences, including stories about the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope, eliciting numerous questions from the participants.
The talk was also presented by Dr. Michal Drahus, HYADES Principal Investigator, who talked about the HYADES project, an ambitious endeavor to build a space telescope that, once launched, will study hydrogen and deuterium around comets and asteroids with 100 times better accuracy than the Hubble Space Telescope. The project has the potential to revolutionize our knowledge of the origin of water on Earth.
Participants in the event could also see demonstrations of Martian rovers prepared by Fiction Lab and a demonstration of a wind tunnel dedicated to research on aeolian transport on Mars.
The lectures were followed by an exciting debate between the speakers, during which the audience had the opportunity to ask questions, resulting in lively and inspiring discussions.
Photos by Krzysztof Magda.
