"The Martian" and InSight into Mars
Learn more about ETH Zurich's contribution to the InSight mission to Mars, as well as, the myths and facts behind the popular film, "The Martian," starring Matt Damon.
Space holds a fascination for us all. Scientists throughout history have hoped that space research could hold the key to understanding the earth’s past – and its future. NASA’s mission to send the InSight lander to Mars represents the latest chapter in this saga: the unmanned spacecraft, scheduled to land on Monday, 26 November 2018, will install geophysical instruments on the surface of the red planet that allow us to explore its interior. The instruments on board will include a seismometer to record marsquakes and meteorite impacts. Several groups at ETH Zurich are responsible for the sensor’s data acquisition and control electronics, and will evaluate and interpret the acquired data.
Mars is often considered one of our solar system’s most earthlike planets, and besides its interest for the scientific community, it is also prominently represented in pop culture and science fiction. Ridley Scott’s film The Martian was a resounding international success, but how realistic is it to grow potatoes on Mars? What do we know about the atmosphere on the red planet? And what insights do scientists hope to gain from the InSight mission to Mars?
We are pleased to invite you to a screening of The Martian, starring Matt Damon, and a panel discussion on these topics. Ana Maria Montero of CNNMoney Switzerland will moderate a panel of experts including:
- ETH Zurich Professor Domenico Giardini, who will speak on ETH’s contribution to the InSight mission to Mars
- ETH Zurich doctoral researcher Grace Crain, who works on “space farming” as part of European Space Agency’s agro-project MELiSSA
- Astrophysicist and citizen science advocate Kevin Schawinski, who will separate the facts from the Hollywood hype when it comes to Mars’s atmosphere.
Further information on the InSight mission:
Event Details
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
ETH Zurich
AudiMax (Main building, HG F 30)
Rämistrasse 101
8092 Zurich
15.30 Doors open
16.00 Film screening of “external pageThe Martian” - Part I (English/DE subtitles)
17.10 Panel discussion (English) and brief intermission
17.50 Film screening - Part II
19.00 End of the evening
Event is free and open to members of the public with an interest in ETH Zurich research. Please register in advance at the button below or copy and paste this link into your browser: http://www.event.ethz.ch/ETHonMars
Moderator and Panelists
Ana Maria Montero, CNN Money Switzerland
Moderating the event, Ana Maria Montero is an international TV, radio and print journalist with 20 years of experience with CNN (CNNMoney Switzerland, CNN International, CNN Español and CNN domestic), in English and Spanish. She has worked as a news correspondent covering a wide variety of political, environmental, and social events. While Los Angeles is officially home, she has worked out of Atlanta, Manhattan, Miami, Chicago, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City just to name a few. Currently Montero works in Zurich as an anchor for 'The Swiss Pulse' on external pageCNNMoney Switzerland.
Domenico Giardini, Full Professor of Seismology and Geodynamics at the ETH Zurich and co-PI of the 2018 NASA InSight Mars mission
An Italian native, Giardini earned his doctorate at the University of Bologna, worked as postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, and later served as the Director of the Swiss Seismological Service among many other high-level positions in Switzerland and Italy. Giardini has coordinated international projects for the European Commission, UNESCO, NASA, and ESA among others. Most recently, he served as the co-PI of the 2015 ESA Pathfinder mission, to test technologies for the detection of gravitational waves he is coordinating the activities of ETH groups in the 2018 NASA InSight mission, to install a seismometer on Mars.
Kevin Schawinski, Astrophysicist and co-founder Modulos.ai
Schawinski is co-founder and CEO of external pageModulos AG, an artificial intelligence startup based in Zurich. He studied physics and mathematics at Cornell University and earned aPh.D in just three years at Oxford University, for which he won the Royal Astronomical Society’s thesis prize. Afterwards, he moved to Yale University with a NASA Einstein Fellowship and returned to Switzerland as an assistant professor at ETH Zurich. His research focused on the formation of galaxies and black holes and how we can use citizen science and machine learning to better understand the physics involved. In 2018, he founded the ETH Spinoff Modulos to take his academic research out of the lab and into the market. In his spare time, he runs, skis and fails badly at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Grace Crain, doctoral student working on "Space Cropping" - a research project for MELiSSA & the European Space Agency
Crain completed her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences with a focus on plant ecology from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana in 2015. Following graduation, she worked with Point Blue Conservation Science in Petaluma, California as a native plant restoration and education intern. Crain finished her Masters in Biological Sciences on nutrient cycling in biocrust-dominated soils of the Chihuahuan desert in August 2018 from the University of Texas at El Paso. She is currently a doctoral student working on a research project for external pageMELiSSA with ESA and the D-USYS Plant Nutrition Group at ETH Zurich focusing on constructing a microbial consortia suitable for food growth production for life support systems.