Planetary Society Weekly Hangout, Thu Dec 20 1200PT/2000UT: Making Titan in the laboratory with Sarah Hörst

Posted By Emily Lakdawalla

2012/12/19 10:06 CST

Topics: events and announcements, podcasts and videos, human spaceflight, Saturn's moons, Titan

Join us for our weekly Google+ Hangout Thursday at noon PT / 2000 UT. This week, I'm excited to have as a guest Sarah Hörst. Sarah is a postdoc at the University of Colorado whose current line of research involves experimental work on the complex atmospheric chemistry of Titan. She is also applying to be an astronaut! I'll embed the video here when we go live.

NASA / JPL / SSI / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic

Titan from "behind"

Cassini gazed toward Titan's night side on February 24, 2009 at 13:06 UTC to capture a view of the moon in silhouette, ringed by its thick atmosphere.

Comments:

frankbevan: 12/20/2012 04:35 CST

frustrating ---How bouncey was that interview :) *the richest man on teh planet owns a telecommunications buisness,for a measley 10billion of his wealth --surely You could put microphones on a few planets and moons ?ofc his name would be on the equipment. Mr Bill gates ---same deal for him but his 10billion would go to making 1/4 sized rovers like the 1 on mars,same deal applies his name is plastered all over the rovers,dropped on moons and planets. this next bit is gonan be a bit harder --we then have to make collect return rockets,my thinking is if you can land over a ton of robot on mars,you could make soem that drops a probe onto teh surface of say titan its takes a 10kg payload,of material and then fires its self back towards mars or it waits in orbit and the craft that delivers the rocket picks it back up and turns tail back to the lab in space. you would want at least 15 of these types of recover/return type of rockets.as with all teh other equipment 1billion makes sure your name gets on a rocket. if its about money ---then make it about money,because i want to see whats on the other side of those picture Emily posted on mars :) very raely a picture makes me a bit wet--those pictures do/did i need to no whats on the other side of the crater wall. all thats stoppin this is money <--what money compared to knowledge? sorry for babbling and all teh spelling mistakes and so forth and so on.

Fred Merchant: 12/21/2012 09:20 CST

I enjoyed the hangout. It appeared Ms Horst was nervous. Being hard-of-hearing I had trouble making out what she was saying much of the time. What I did catch was good, however. Thank you for putting that together. I've never done a "hangout" before.

Stephen: 12/29/2012 09:37 CST

A change of pace from the Mars-focussed previous hangouts Good luck to Ms Horst in her quest to be an astronaut, although I'm not sure whether that would be a good move for her career-wise given her interest in Titan's atmosphere. If she does fly, she's more likely to find herself studying Earth's from the ISS than anywhere farther afield! :-) Still, it's good to hear though that people are still interested in joining despite the demise of Constellation.