by Surabhi Agarwal, Co-editor
The calendar is ready to flip over to 2013. Another year in the books, full of wonderful moments in space news. Some of the more memorable moments came when NASA’s rover Curiosity landed safely on the surface of Mars and began sending back astonishing pictures of the red planet. The year 2012 also saw the space shuttle era come to a close after flying 135 missions and helping to construct the International Space Station. The twin GRAIL spacecrafts Ebb and Flow were launched together in September 2011. Their mission to measure and map moon’s gravity field was completed successfully this December.
We start the New Year by looking forward to a new era of space flight with Orion, America’s next generation spacecraft. Heaven knows which distant planetary bodies will be explored next. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will have the capability to carry humans to great distances, sustain the crew during long voyages and provide safe re-entry from deep space.
Jenny Greene, assistant professor of astronomy at Princeton University
Jenny Greene is an assistant professor of astronomy at Princeton University. She studies super massive black holes and the galaxies in which they exist. Professor Greene did her undergraduate work at Yale and graduate work at Harvard. In her spare time, she teaches algebra to inmates in New Jersey state prisons, as part of a large volunteer initiative run by Professor Knapp of Princeton Astrophysics.
See you on January 8 at 8:00 p.m. in Peyton Hall.
Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton 