Charles L. Bennett is the Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Learn what Phoenix taught us about water, climate cycles, and habitability on Mars as we travel with Peter Smith to a polar summer where the sun never sets.

Discover how impacts shaped the Solar System we see today as Robert Strom guides us through the history of these dramatic events.

Learn about the awesome power of the wind in this lecture illustrated with remarkable images from multiple Mars missions.

Volcanoes are common throughout the Solar System and volcanic eruptions are among nature's most awesome spectacles.

Dr. Alan M. Title, senior fellow at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center, will help us get to know the Sun a bit better and to appreciate that it is a more unpredictable creature than ever thought possible.

Fewer and fewer planets in our Solar System have been found to be viable for life, although we are still looking. But what about the more than 300 “exoplanets” beyond our Solar System that have now been discovered? 

As each new technology complementing the telescope was applied to the question, "What is the Universe?", our understanding of that question changed in profound ways. Dr. Vera Rubin of the Carnegie Institution of Washington will discuss this question.

Well-known interpreter of astronomy and sky lore, David H. Levy, will discuss  how and why astronomy captures the imaginations of so many people. 

Dr. Tom Bogdan, Director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, will provide an overview of how space weather can affect our advanced technologies-based global economy.