Deputy Manager of Planetary Sciences at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the U.S. Space Agency (Nasa), California, the astronomer Rosaly Lopes will address a lecture on Wednesday (9/19), at 3h30 pm, at the Fernando de Mendonça auditorium (LIT) of the National Institute for Space Research, in São José dos Campos.

Under the theme “The major planetary missions: Galileo to Jupiter and Cassini to Saturn”, the lecture is free of charge but places are limited. Those interested must apply for registration by sending full name and I.D. to the e-mail filo@dge.inpe.br

Galileo and Cassini missions have consisted in sending space probes aimed at studying Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. They are similar to the Curiosity mission, recently launched to explore Mars, which will also be mentioned in the lecture.

Rosaly Lopes comes to INPE through Ciência sem Fronteiras (CsF), a governamental program aimed at supporting Brazilian students abroad and at bringing leading experts to Brazil. The Brazilian Rosaly Lopes has been working for over 20 years at JPL/NASA.  Her project in CsF will last three years, with periodic visits to INPE for studies on Space Geophysics.

Volcanoes

Researcher who led the Cassini Mission, which has explored Saturn and its moons by satellite, Rosaly Lopes is considered one of the world’s foremost experts in volcanoes. Graduated in Astronomy and PhD in Planetary Science at the University College, UK, Rosaly Lopes is a Senior Research Scientist at JPL Earth and Space Sciences Division, where she uses remote sensing to study processes occurring on the planets surfaces.
 
Among her more recent projects are: analysis of the infrared spectrum of the moon Io with data obtained by the Galileo spacecraft (Galileo's Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer - NIMS) and New Horizons spacecraft; and geological structure analysis of Titan using observations from Cassini (Radar Mapper) with emphasis on cryovolcanic structures. She is the author of numerous scientific papers and several books, as Volcanic Worlds: Exploring the Solar System Volcanoes.

More information about the researcher Rosaly Lopes on

http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Lopes/

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