Hear about recent innovative missions and take a look back at the history of space exploration with distinguished lecturers and experts on the forefront of space science and history. The Exploring Space Lecture series runs annually, from March to June. The 2025 series will explore planetary oceans:
Life as we know it requires access to water, usually liquid water, and Earth is not the only place in our solar system where we can find this resource. In this year’s Exploring Space Lecture Series, we will explore the distribution of liquid oceans in our solar system, past and present; consider the origins of Earth’s oceans and learn about what happened to Mars’ oceans; question whether Earth’s twin, Venus, could have ever been cool enough to support oceans; and examine why the outer solar system is dominated by moons with salty, underground oceans.
This lecture series is made possible by the generous support of Aerojet Rocketdyne, An L3Harris Technologies Company and United Launch Alliance.
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Michael Werner, the Spitzer Project Scientist for over 30 years, discusses Spitzer’s technical innovations and the scientific advances they enabled.
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Join Dartmouth professor Mary K. Hudson as she discusses how a particularly violent class of solar storms became identified as the major mechanism producing disruptions in space weather in the Earth's vicinity.
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Learn about the awesome power of the wind in this lecture illustrated with remarkable images from multiple Mars missions.
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Join Carol Raymond on a tour of this ancient world and learn what it can tell us about the early days of the solar system.
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David Charbonneau, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, will discuss how, using upcoming large telescopes, astronomers will search the atmospheres of Earth-like planets for the telltale chemical fingerprints of life.
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In this lecture, Jennifer Wiseman, Hubble Space Telescope senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, will highlight Hubble’s newest incredible observations of stars, distant galaxies, and even planets outside our solar system. Tickets are free but required.
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Sheperd Doeleman, founding director of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, talks about how his team accomplished the historic achievement of imaging a black hole.