The Cassini Spacecraft Mission at Saturn

In September 2017, the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens spacecraft mission ended its 20 years in space by burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere. The end of mission orbits were designed to better understand the interior of Saturn and its magnetic field. These end of mission results will be described as well as some of the other surprising discoveries made during the orbital tour at Saturn, including water vapour plumes at the small moon Enceladus and implications this has for potential habitability.

Biography

Michele Dougherty is Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College London. She is leading unmanned exploratory missions to Saturn and Jupiter and was the Principal Investigator for the magnetometer instrument onboard the Cassini mission to Saturn as well as being the Principal Investigator the magnetometer for the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) of the European Space Agencies due for launch in June 2022. She is Head of the Physics Department, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Geophysics Gold medal in 2017, was awarded a CBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List, and was awarded the Institute of Physics Richard Glazebrook Gold Medal and Prize.
About the Schrödinger Lecture
The Erwin Schrödinger Lecture is an annual event named after the noted Austrian scientist. Schrödinger was a theoretical physicist and a significant contributor to the wave theory of matter, a form of quantum physics. He mathematically devised an equation of wave mechanics that bears his name. He was a co-recipient of the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics. Today he is popularly known for the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat.
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