Dr. Jeffrey Moore speaks on Kuiper belt mission

Come hear Dr. Moore Saturday December 6th 8:00 p.m.

Dr. Jeffrey M. Moore is a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. His research has focused on a range of topics relating to the geologic evolution of planetary landscapes and crustal materials. He has conducted extensive laboratory simulations of Martian geologic processes and over the past year has conducted research on the implications of impact craters on Europa for a sub-surface ocean. Dr. Moore is Project Scientist of the Carl Sagan Center, to be located at Ames Research Center. He is imaging node leader for NASA's New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission.

The New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission is designed to help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of Pluto and Charon - a "double planet" system and the last in our solar system to be visited by spacecraft. The mission would then visit one or more Kuiper Belt Objects, in the region beyond Neptune. New Horizons is scheduled to launch in January 2006, swing past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and reach Pluto and its moon, Charon, in July 2015.