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How far are we from Interstellar?... The future of space exploration

14 May 2018

Time: 7:00 - 10:00pm
Venue: The Horseshoe 24 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R 0AG

If you often find yourself looking at the sky and wonder what's beyond us and whether we will ever be able to go on a interplanetary trip, this is a night you can't miss!
Getting up close to the Sun with Parker Solar Probe
Professor David Burgess (Professor Mathematics and Astronomy Astronomy Unit, Queen Mary University of London) 
The Sun is a flaming ball of gas, but actually just above its surface is the corona which extends through the solar system as the solar wind, carrying the Sun’s influence past all the planets. The corona, at around a million degrees, is much, much hotter than the surface of the sun, and this is one of the puzzles of astrophysics. The Parker Solar probe, launched in 2018, will go closer to the Sun than any other space mission. It will have to survive an extremely hostile environment, but will, if all goes well, return data that will help solve the mysteries of the corona and solar wind.

Moon and Mars Direct: How we can open the space frontier within a decade

Dr. Robert Zubrin (Mars Society President) 
 @robert_zubrin 
--This talk will be delivered via Skype.--

Mars – the new world of our time – is within reach. It’s the challenge that will draw our youth into science and engineering, with vast benefits to our society as a result. But more than that, it’s the first step into an open frontier, offering an unlimited future for humanity.
The effort to get there won’t be free of either risk or cost. But from a technical point of view, we are much closer to send humans to the Red Planet today than we were to send men to the Moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later.
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