SHORT COURSE: DISCOVERY AND SURPRISE

Short Course Presenters:

The stated motivation for planetary missions is to answer scientific questions. The course will provide a brief historical overview by noted experts of missions to typical probe targets (Venus, Mars, Titan, and ice/gas giants), the scientific questions that motivated them, what was actually found, and the current questions motivating future missions. The end-to-end process of formulating scientific objectives and the means to answer them, then implementing a flight project, and finally analyzing and archiving the data, will be discussed by speakers with direct experience in these steps.

The lack of knowledge that motivates missions also makes them challenging — occasionally the intended questions remain unanswered due to unexpected circumstances such as instrument failure or environmental complexity (as was the case on the Galileo probe in descending in a “hot dry” region). On the other hand, there are often serendipitous discoveries that were unanticipated, such as the exposure of ice beneath the Phoenix lander by its landing thrusters. Often even rudimentary engineering data can yield interesting scientific insights.  Course attendees will experience the thrill of discovery themselves in an interactive analysis exercise using flight data from several planetary missions.