2:30 pm to 4:30 pm

Location:
Serra Mesa Branch Library (map)
9005 Aero Dr, San Diego, CA

Join us for the October program meeting of the San Diego Space Society. Dr. Philip R. Harris will be discussing his latest books, Space Enterprise and Lunar Pioneers.

Dr. Harris is a management/space psychologist, as well as a prolific author and futurist.  He is president of Harris International, Ltd. in La Jolla, California, founded in 1971 as a global management consultancy for  human resource and organization development.

Everyone is welcome to attend this presentation. Email events@sdspace.org if you have any questions.

2:30 pm to 4:30 pm

Location:
Serra Mesa Branch Library (map)
9005 Aero Dr, San Diego, CA

Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) has for decades been one of our most powerful tools for testing Einstein’s theory of gravity, or general relativity. LLR provides the best tests to date of the equivalence principle, of the constancy of the strength of gravity, of gravitomagnetism, and much more. In addition, LLR probes the nature of the lunar interior.  The science of LLR will be presented, along with a description of the technique.  The design and results of APOLLO (the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation) will be highlighted.  Also covered will be APOLLO’s recent discovery of the lost reflector on the Soviet Lunokhod 1 rover, after almost 40 years of silence.

Tom Murphy is an associate professor of physics at UCSD. Murphy was an amateur astronomer in high school, a physics undergraduate at Georgia Tech, then combined the two interests as a graduate student at Caltech, where he built an infrared integral field spectrograph for the Palomar 200-inch telescope. With this spectrograph, Murphy disentangled train-wreck galaxy mergers called ultraluminous infrared galaxies.  After graduation in 2000, Murphy switched gears as a postdoc at the University of Washington in Seattle to initiate the APOLLO lunar ranging project.  He continued the development of APOLLO after he arrived at UCSD in 2003. Today, he continues to lead the APOLLO project, also developing keen interests in energy use in our society.

Everyone is welcome to attend this presentation. Email events@sdspace.org if you have any questions.

6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Location:
X PRIZE Foundation Headquarters (map)
5510 Lincoln Blvd Suite 100, Playa Vista, CA

SD Space members will be attending the X PRIZE Foundation Tweetup. Details on attending can be found at the official event website.

Please join us on the evening of Friday, April 30th, 2010 for the X PRIZE Foundation’s first ever TweetUp!  For the first time, we are holding an open house to give us a chance to interact directly with our online fans and supporters.

The event will feature brief, Ignite-style presentations on the Foundation’s three ongoing prizes—the Archon Genomics X PRIZE, the Google Lunar X PRIZE, and the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE —as well as our on-going work developing new prizes in a variety of fields. Additionally, we’ll be joined by a very special guest; Anousheh Ansari, the first female private space explorer and a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation, will join us for a reading and signing or her new memoir, My Dream of Stars, co-authored by Homer Hickham (Rocket Boys). At this event, Anousheh will discuss her new memoir and the pursuit of her goal to travel to space.

The event will take place at the X PRIZE Foundation’s headquarters in Playa Vista, CA from 6pm – 8pm on Friday, April 30th. Light appetizers and refreshments will be provided. Cameras, tweeting, and live-blogging of the event are, of course, welcomed. This event is open to any and all of our fans, but space will be limited; so be sure to register early to ensure admission to the event. Further details, including directions and parking instructions, will be provided to our confirmed guests. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Location:
SDAA Observation Site (map and directions)
Tierra de Luna Rd, Tierra del Sol, CA

On Thursday evening, October 8th, the San Diego Astronomy Association will be hosting a special star party event at the Tierra Del Sol remote observation facility 90 minutes east of San Diego. The NASA Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will be completing its mission to the moon by smashing two large pieces of the satellite into the moon. The impact will eject material from the crater’s surface to create a plume that will be visible to astronomers nationwide. The SDAA invites interested members of the public to attend the viewing of this once-in-a-lifetime event.

The SDAA will be turning its telescopes, both large and small towards the moon to observe and photograph the impact. It is expected that ejected material from the crater formed by the explosion will be visible to observers peering through the telescopes on the Earth. Several of the telescopes will be outfitted with special video cameras which will project the images live to screens setup at the site for the public to see.

The event begins Thursday evening at 6PM with a public lecture about the LCROSS mission by a NASA/JPL Ambassador. Throughout the evening public star gazing and observation of the moon as it rises into position will precede the big impact. At 3AM a morning coffee and continental breakfast will be served prior to commencing science observations. At 3:30 AM communications with other observers across the United States and with the NASA observation teams will be established. The impact event will occur at 4:30am and we hope to see both the explosion from the impact, and the dust plume thrown up into space.

Members of the public who wish to attend should call 858-877-3103 or send an email request for a ticket to publicity@sdaa.org to RSVP, as the event will be limited to a total of 300 attendees. Overnight camping is available and full details about how to reach the Tierra Del Sol site, and what to bring with you to the event will be emailed to those who RSVP in advance of the event. You must RSVP to attend.

The Mission Objectives of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) include confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole. The identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the Moon. LCROSS will excavate the permanently dark floor of one of the Moon’s polar craters with two heavy impactors to test the theory that ancient ice lies buried there. The impact will eject material from the crater’s surface to create a plume that specialized instruments will be able to analyze for the presence of water (ice and vapor), hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.

We hope you will attend this fascinating and once in a lifetime event.

Contact Jerry Hilburn at 858-877-3103 for all publicity requests concerning this event.

2:30 pm to 4:30 pm

Location:
Serra Mesa Branch Library (map)
9005 Aero Dr, San Diego, CA

Join us for the September general meeting of the San Diego Space Society. Dr. David Schrunk of the San Diego Moon Society will give a lecture on the Planet Moon Project, which portrays a vision to transform the Moon into an inhabited sister planet of the Earth in the 21st century.

Dr. Schrunk is lead author of “The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Settlement” (2007), which has been praised  as “a handbook describing what must be done to return to the Moon, build permanent bases, and use them as a springboard for economic development”.

Everyone is welcome to attend this presentation. Email events@sdspace.org if you have any questions.

I love it when good projects come together. Google Lunar X Prize team Omega Envoy has been demonstrating their latest Moon rover prototype at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), operated by the Mars Society.

The initial demonstration was to remotely control the rover from Omega Envoy Headquarters in Orlando, Fl., take images of the crew hab, and stream the coverage live from mission control as well as the video from the rover feed. This was just the first of many more demonstrations the team plans to complete before the expedition concludes at the end of July.

So if you’re following along on your NewSpace Bingo card, mark off the “private Moon mission”, “human Mars mission”, and “Earth analog” squares. Thanks for playing!

12:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Location:
Reuben H. Fleet Science Center (map)
1875 El Prado, San Diego, CA

As the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission approaches, Dr. Philip Blanco will be at the Fleet Science Center for an inspiring presentation with restored archival footage from the Apollo missions and lunar demonstrations.

Included with paid admission. Lecture takes place in the William & Grayson Boehm Community Forum.

The Moon Society is trying out a new online science fiction magazine, Moonbeams. The third issue has been posted, and it’s free to read (and to share):

Moonbeams is a new quarterly publication of the Moon Society, introduced last fall. In electronic form only – as a downloadable pdf file – Moonbeams is a science fiction rag, specializing in realistic (no fantasy – no wish-it-were-so physics) near space frontier tales.

The function of Moonbeams is both to expand the vision of our own members, and to draw interested visitors into the Society. Anyone downloading an issue of Moonbeams may freely circulate it to others. Indeed, we encourage you to do so!

Take a look, and post your review in the comments. They’re also calling for submissions, so it might be a good time to revisit that near-future space exploration story you’ve always wanted to write.

11:00 am to 12:00 pm

Location:
Grossmont College, Building 51, room 575 (map)
8800 Grossmont College Dr, El Cajon, CA

Dr. David Schrunk of the San Diego Moon Society will give a 1-hour lecture on the “Planet Moon Project” at Grossmont College.

Dr. Schrunk is lead author of “The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Settlement” (2007), which has been praised  as “a handbook describing what must be done to return to the Moon, build permanent bases, and use them as a springboard for economic development”.

Dr. Schrunk will also make a second presentation that day on the “Science
of Laws” at 2pm (room 577), based on other acclaimed book “The End of
Chaos: Quality Laws and the Ascendancy of Democracy”.

Members of the public are welcome to attend. These talks are part of Grossmont College’s Political Economy Week and are sponsored by the Associated Students and the Grossmont College Foundation.

For more information please contact Dr. Philip Blanco, Grossmont College Physics/Astronomy Department, at Philip.Blanco@gcccd.edu.