SETI INSTITUTE

NASA's New Horizons made history when it flew by Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, nicknamed 'Ultima Thule', on New Year's Day of this year. Today, even though only 10% of the scientific data that the spacecraft collected has been sent to Earth, New Horizons has provided an amazing glimpse into the primordial solar system and revealed that Ultima Thule is the first contact binary object ever observed “in the wild” where it formed and in a largely unmodified state since its birth. High resolution images and the first comprehensive compositional spectroscopy data are now in-hand with the science team and many more scientific results will no doubt soon be forthcoming. To discuss the key results of this successful flyby and the future of the mission, we invited Alan Stern, planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute and the Principal Investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission who will join us remotely via video-conferencing. Two Senior Research Scientists from our own SETI Institute who are part of the mission will participate in this discussion as well. Mark Showalter is a Fellow of the Institute who led the New Horizons risk assessment team before the flyby, and Ross Beyer, also a member of the New Horizons Geology and Geophysics team, who is helping to understand the 3D shape of MU69.

Each year we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8. In some countries, it’s a holiday, in others, it’s practically ignored. At the SETI Institute, we have women working at all levels – as leaders, as scientists, as educators and as professionals who make it all happen. The women of the SETI Institute are smart, talented, dedicated, passionate and hard-working. We are grateful for all the women of the SETI Institute who help us advance our mission every day. Thank you!

Movie revealing the shock veins inside the fifth Creston meteorite found, using X-ray Computed Tomography. Movie: UC Davis/Douglas Rowland.

What should we expect from the next generation of space telescopes? What key scientific questions will they help answer? Do we have the technology we need to operate them in 20-30 years? To address these issues, NASA selected four large space mission concepts to study and consider as possible future Large Strategic Science Missions. Of the NASA astrophysics division missions, these tend to be the most expensive, but also have the greatest capacity. Three of those space telescopes got the attention of the SETI Institute because of their potential to answer the question, “Are We Alone?” The Origins Space Telescope (Origins) is a large cooled infrared space telescope with higher sensitivity and better angular resolution than any prior observatory accessing similar wavelengths. Among its many science objectives covering the first stars to life, Origins could help scientists understand the abundance and availability of water for habitable planets and could look forbiosignatures on potentially habitable worlds transiting low-mass stars. The Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor (or LUVOIR) is a general-purpose observatory; its key science goal is to characterize a wide range of exoplanets, including those that might be habitable and orbiting a range of stellar types. The Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx) is a space telescope, optimized to search for and image Earth-sized exoplanets in the habitable zones around sun-like stars, where liquid water might exist. HabEx would also have a suite of general astrophysics science capabilities. Each of these concepts has pros and cons, as well as other technological, cost, and risk challenges. These mission concepts will be described in detail in their final study reports, which will be delivered to the National Academy of Sciences for the Astro 2020 Decadal Survey later this year. It is still unknown whether the Decadal Survey will prioritize none, one, or even all of these concepts, but the several hundred scientists and engineers involved in these mission concept studies for the past three years are confident that we are now capable of building these telescopes, and that the science that they can deliver will be compelling and change again our view of the cosmos, just as the Hubble Space Telescope has done for the past 3 decades. We invited three scientists directly involved in each one of the three teams above to discuss these exciting future mission projects. During this SETI Talk, they will describe their projects, and tell us more about the challenges and the processes that could make these missions a reality: Prof. Courtney Dressing, astronomer and member of the LUVOIR Science and Technology Definition Team (STDT), whose research aims to detect and characterize planetary systems orbiting nearby stars. Dr. Kimberly Ennico Smith, a NASA research astrophysicist who is multidisciplinary in her approach to space instruments, telescopes, and mission concepts. She is a member of the STDT of OST. Prof. Scott Gaudi, astronomer and community chair of the HabEx STDT, who bridges the gap between theory and observations, with extensive experience in leadership roles and consensus-building, as well as experience with several exoplanet detection methods and exoplanet surveys.

This month, we invited three scientists whose work is directly related to Antarctica to discuss the potential of this “continent for science”. Peter Roopnarine, Curator of Geology, Department of Invertebrate Zoology & Geology, Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability, California Academy of Sciences,  has studied ecosystems in extreme environments and how a planet emerges from a snowball to become a diverse biosphere. Tyler Mackey, Postdoctoral Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focuses his research on habitats of the cryosphere and has dived in the lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica to study records of microbial activity. Ariel Waldman, citizen scientist and artist, just recently came back from an expedition in Antarctica, where she filmed microbes living within glaciers, under the sea ice, and in subglacial ponds. While there, she also shadowed various research teams, including a mission testing an autonomous underwater vehicle. Beyond understanding the past life of our planet, Antarctica is a great platform to study life in an extreme environment. This month’s speakers are explorers who travel to the bottom of Earth to search for and characterize life with instruments that could one day explore Europa’s ocean. They’ll share their thoughts on Earth’s cryogenic past, when the surface was entirely or partially frozen, and discuss how their work in Antarctica is related to understanding its impact on the expansion of complex multicellular life.

CEO Bill Diamond is joined by New Horizons Hazard team lead and SETI Institute Senior Scientist, Mark Showalter to discuss the spacecraft's flyby of Ultima Thule, what it's like working on the Hazards team, and even the naming of some of Pluto's surface features.

For more than four decades, astronomers have been searching for technosignatures: signals coming from distant technological civilizations. The first SETI searches began in the 1960s by searching for extraterrestrial radio waves and have more recently expanded to include optical (visible) signals, such as powerful laser pulses. We know that, like technological progress, the search is also accelerating, evolving with the development of new antenna arrays and new networks of telescopes which will soon be capable listening to the entire sky, everywhere, and all the time. It is impossible to know when we will get our first contact and what this message will say, but we know that this discovery will have an ethical and political impact on our world. And then what will happen next? Will the detection of ET be dangerous or beneficial for humankind? Will it change everything, including our place in the universe or will we simply continue our life knowing that ‘We are not alone’? To discuss these points, we invited four SETI researchers: Julia DeMarines, Astrobiologist and Science Communicator at the UC Berkeley SETI Research Center, Doug Vakoch, President of METI, Eliot Gillum, director of LASER SETI and Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute.

Kepler was NASA’s first mission dedicated to the search for planets around other stars, called exoplanets. The first exoplanet was discovered just 20 years prior to launch, and only a few hundred more were discovered in that time, with most of them inhabitable and more similar to gas giants like Jupiter than Earth. In the nearly ten years since Kepler’s launch, data from the spacecraft has resulted in the detection of thousands of exoplanets, with a multitude of them the size of Earth or smaller, and many of them at the right distance from their star to possibly support life. Thanks to data from Kepler, we now have greater understanding of two terms of the Drake Equation that had eluded us for fifty-seven years --- we now know there are even more planets than stars in our galaxy and that a significant number of them could have the right conditions to be habitable. Thanks to Kepler, we know that Earth is not alone. The odds of humanity not being alone in the cosmos seem high. But there are still a lot of big terms in that simple little Drake Equation to figure out. The search will continue with new space telescopes like TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and future generation of large space telescopes like JWST (James Webb Space Telescope). We invited Natalie Batalha, Professor at U.C. Santa Cruz, and Doug Caldwell, Senior Research Scientist at the SETI Institute to discuss the state of the search for exoplanets. What did we learn from the Kepler mission? What are the most exotic planetary systems discovered so far? What are the chances of finding extraterrestrial life in the next decade using new telescopes? These are the questions that will be addressed during our special SETI Talk on the end of the Kepler spacecraft on November 13 at 7pm at SRI International, Menlo Park, CA. Join us for a special tribute to the Kepler spacecraft.

As humans prepare to venture once more into deep space, there is a clear need for creating new models for space exploration and expanding the roles, for those who travel in space and eventually settle on other worlds and for those on the ground whose work ensures their success. In our first space era, astronaut heroes thrilled us with their daring exploits in the high-flying rocket-ships they rode all the way to the moon and back. Women were not invited to go along, but many were integral to the effort, an invisible space community that we’re just beginning to value and recognize, a revised and more comprehensive history that includes Hidden Figures, Rocket Girls, the Mercury 13, and more. It’s been six decades since we first left Earth. The heyday of the space cowboy has come and gone, and the face of space exploration is overdue for a makeover. As humans prepare to venture once more into deep space, the need is clear to create new models for space exploration and to expand the roles, not only for those who travel in space and eventually settle on other worlds, but also for the ground-based scientists and technicians who are so vital to the success of any off-Earth mission. Speakers: Dr. Jan Millsapps, Brian Patrick Green, Dr. Margaret Race

The SETI Institute is known for its world-class, cutting edge scientific research but we also have a passion as science ambassadors to inspire young STEM learners and engage the general public. Education and public outreach are part of our mission and that’s why the Center for Education is one of the three centers of the SETI Institute. The SETI Institute’s Center for Education promotes STEM education through NASA- and NSF-funded, as well as privately funded programs aimed at educating and inspiring children, young adults and educators with emphasis on space sciences and astrobiology. Join us on August 14 at 7pm at SRI International Headquarters in Menlo Park, CA for a special SETI Talk to hear about our education programs. Pamela Harman, Acting Director of Center for Education at the SETI Institute, will give an overview of our education programs, including our NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), the NASA Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors (AAA), STEM Teacher and Researcher (STAR), Reaching for the Stars: NASA Science for Girl Scouts (Girl Scout Stars), and the NASA Frontier Development Labs (NASA-FDL). Several participants from those programs, including Jessica Henricks (Girl Scouts of Northern California Council), Zoe Sharp (STAR Fellow), Marita Beard (AAA), and one REU student of the year 2018 will discuss their experience and what they learned while being embedded in our Center for Education.

What is the potential of Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) technology in Space? Could VR technology plays a role in our ambition to reach the stars. Could we use this new tool to explore and understand our solar system? Will it help to harvest the almost infinite amount of energy and material available in space? Together with VR/AR specialists, Space entrepreneurs, as well as scientific institutions like the SETI Institute, we will discuss the role of VR/AR, emphasizing how this new technology can be used by scientists, engineers, and educators to build, share and describe future innovative space projects as well as share with the public the excitement of exploring our universe. Timoni West is a director of XR Research in Unity Labs, managing a team of cross-disciplinary artists and engineers. Her group explores how humans can create and live in worlds in virtual & augmented reality. She will describe how the VR/AR tools are now available to everybody giving the opportunity to talented artists and engineers to build their own applications for space exploration. Amaresh Kollipara is an Emmy-nominated VR producer and space industry executive with a multidisciplinary background. He recently led a project called Mission:ISS at Facebook's VR company Oculus. This project was conducted in collaboration with NASA and is a true-to-life simulation of the International Space Station in VR. Amaresh will also discuss new VR use cases being developed by NASA, ESA, and other agencies. He’ll discuss how several agencies and companies are using VR and AR technologies to visualize large amounts of data and communicate space themes with the general public. Franck Marchis, a senior planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute and Chief Scientific Officer at Unistellar. Franck is also a scientific advisor for VR2Planets, a company which specialized in creating accurate environments from space-based and drone/rover data to help scientists explore and understand planets and other bodies in our solar system. A multi-user demo which immerses the users on the surface of Mars made from the Curiosity rover data combined with the space-satellite data will be featured at the event. Franck will discuss his thoughts on the potential of VR for scientific investigations at large. J.R Skok is a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute. His research is focused on exploring the deep history of Mars and the Earth and the active exploration for astrobiology. He is the scientific advisor for AstroReality, a company that developed topographically precise planetary models that are paired with AR technology for education and science outreach. J.R. will demonstrate the power of combining the limitless potential of AR with tangible handheld artifacts to understand Space like never before.

Presentation of award to Dr. Meadows, followed by short lecture and panel discussion with Victoria Meadows, Nathalie Cabrol, and Jill Tarter. Moderated by Seth Shostak. The SETI Institute’s Drake Award celebrates exemplary contributions to astrobiology through scientific research and space exploration. The award is named for Frank Drake, whose Drake Equation first identified the specific factors necessary for the emergence of life in the Universe and the evolution of technological civilizations. This honor is given at the discretion of the Board of Trustees of the SETI Institute, based on nominations from its Science Advisory Board. The honoree is presented a cash award and trophy, and is invited to describe their research at a public ceremony. This year's event will honor Dr. Victoria S. Meadows, a leader in the scientific analysis of environments on extrasolar planets,and in the search for signs of habitability and life.

Along with celebrating 50 years of software engineering, we can also celebrate the premiere of one of the most famous science fiction movies in history, 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the central characters in the movie was the supercomputer HAL, the most powerful computer imagined at that time. Possessed knowledge superior to that of a human, HAL controlled the spaceship, found solutions to the most complex problems, played chess with the astronauts, and served them continuously. Then something went wrong. Why? Was it a bug in the system, or a problem intrinsic to AI? This is the core question. 50 years later, we might frame the questions differently: Would it be possible to design a computer today that could reach or outreach HAL’s capabilities? Can today’s software do what HAL did? What are the ethical questions and dangers of AI in such a context? In this interactive talk Dr. David Stork will discuss these questions and explore the ethical concerns and potential deep dangers of artificial intelligence. Dr. David G. Stork works in pattern recognition, machine learning, computer vision and computational sensing and imaging and is a pioneer in the application of rigorous computer image analysis to problems in the history and interpretation of fine art. He is a graduate in physics from MIT and the University of Maryland and has held faculty positions in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineer, Statistics, Neuroscience, Psychology and Art and Art History variously at Wellesley and Swarthmore Colleges and Clark, Boston and Stanford Universities. Dr. Stork is a Fellow of IEEE, the Optical Society of America, SPIE, the International Association for Pattern Recognition, the International Academy, Research and Industry Association, the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, and a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is the editor of “HAL’s Legacy, 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality” which reflects upon science fiction's most famous computer and explores the relationship between science fantasy and technological fact.

Mars, the small, cold fourth rock from the Sun, is being given serious consideration by 21st century explorers. Entrepreneur Elon Musk has ambitious plans to send humans to the Red Planet within seven years (and bring them back again); NASA has flown both rovers and landers; and NASA, the European Space Agency, and China have announced plans to each add a rover to the mix in 2020. Even India has orbited Mars, and others such as the UAE are developing their own orbiters. The planned 2020 rovers are part of a strategy that will include bringing samples back from Mars’ surface to Earth. NASA’s Planetary Protection Office was created to “promote a responsible exploration of the solar system by implementing and developing efforts that protect the science, explorers, environments, and Earth.” This has been the agency’s policy, reflecting the non-contamination provisions of the UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Now, some scientists question the need for restrictive contamination guidelines, arguing that new exploration, and in particular a direct search for life in the best places on the Red Planet, is being impeded. Is planetary protection slowing down exploration, and the search for life beyond Earth? Do we have the right to send robotic machinery, or even people, to Mars without giving biologists a chance study it, and look for life? What if that life is hidden underground from view, and requires humans to find it? In April’s SETI Talk, Robert Zubrin, president and founder of the Mars Society, and John Rummel, former NASA Planetary Officer and currently a Senior Scientist with the SETI Institute, will participate in an animated (and lively!) discussion on these issues, moderated by Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer. Dr. John Rummel is a Senior Scientist with the SETI Institute, and chairs its Scientific Advisory Board. He is the former Chair of COSPAR's Panel on Planetary Protection. Rummel has previously worked at NASA Headquarters as NASA's Senior Scientist for Astrobiology and as the Planetary Protection Officer. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1990), the recipient of the Life Sciences Award from the International Academy of Astronautics (2005), and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Performance Award in 2008. Dr. Robert Zubrin, formerly a staff engineer at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, is now president of his own company, Pioneer Astronautics. He holds masters degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, as well as a doctorate in nuclear engineering from the University of Washington. He is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and former Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Space Society and the founder of the Mars Society; an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means.

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Orbiters, followed by rovers sent to Mars, have yielded a dramatic increase in knowledge about Mars over the past decade. Today thanks to several years of data collected in situ and remotely we have a better understanding of its geology and habitability potential. Three SETI Institute planetary scientists who have dedicated their career to the study of the red planet will tell us what we have learned from those studies, and what the next steps are in the exploration of Mars with the next generation of rovers. Janice Bishop will introduce the candidate landing sites for upcoming martian rovers. She will focus on the mineralogy determined from the CRISM spectrometer at Mars and what that can tell us about Mars’ early environment. Ginny Gulick will describe the fluvial morphology/water history of these sites as seen by the HiRISE and CTX cameras. Finally, Pablo Sobron will address the instruments scheduled for the Mars2020 and ExoMars rovers and how SuperCam, Sherlock and the ExoMars Raman/LIBS instrument will be used to explore mineralogy and organics at the future landing sites. janice bishopDr. Janice Bishop is a chemist and planetary scientist at the SETI Institute who explores the planet Mars using reflectance spectroscopy at visible and infrared wavelengths. Her investigations of CRISM data of Mars are revealing clays and sulfates in the ancient rocks that document the geochemical environment and climate at the time the minerals formed. Dr. Bishop studies the spectral fingerprints of minerals and rocks in the lab in order to generate a spectral library for identification of these in the Martian data. Her research also involves collecting and studying Mars analog rocks and soils at a variety of locations including volcanic islands, cold deserts, hydrothermal regions, acidic aqueous sites, and meteorites which are the only Martian samples available on Earth to date. Virginia GulickDr. Ginny Gulick is a Senior Research Scientist at the SETI Institute, who examines erosional features on Mars, looking for the tell-tale signs of running water. Ginny is part of the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) team that directs the high resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), still busy snapping pictures of this alien landscape. In addition to these research efforts, Ginny is heavily into education. She has led the development of a web-based, image target suggestion tool which will allow anyone (especially students) to offer their opinions as to which martian features should be photographed with the MRO. PabloDr. Pablo Sobron is a research scientist at the SETI Institute who has strong interests in robotic space exploration and comparative analogue science - the study of places on Earth that are similar to environments on other planets and moons. Pablo received his Ph.D in Physics from the University of Valladolid, Spain, in 2008. To date, he has lead or collaborated on over 20 projects focused on the development of instruments and data processing tools for missions to explore the Solar System, and on fundamental research. These projects have been sponsored by the European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, and NASA, among others.

To uncover the mysteries of the universe, astronomers are becoming greedy, making more observations than they can possibly analyze manually. Large photometric surveys from space telescopes like Kepler and the future TESS are no exception and today modern astronomers use artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to help them reveal the existence of exoplanets hidden in many years of observations of hundreds of thousands of stars. For this SETI Talk, we invited two researchers involved in the Kepler mission and AI to discuss the potential of neural networks to transform astronomy. Jeff Smith, Data scientist at the SETI Institute, has developed data processing and planet detection algorithms for Kepler since 2010 and is now involved in developing the pipeline for the future TESS mission. Chris Shallue, a senior software engineer at Google AI has used a neural network to analyze archival data from the Kepler Space Telescope to reveal the existence of two unknown exoplanets, named Kepler-90i and Kepler-80g. After presenting their recent work, we will discuss the impact of this new mode of scientific discovery, where artificial intelligence can assist humans in mapping out parts of the galaxy that have not yet been fully revealed. Chris Shallue is a Senior Research Software Engineer on the Google AI team in Mountain View, California. His research is currently focused on machine learning techniques for identifying planets in data collected by the NASA Kepler space telescope. He also works on image captioning, natural language modeling and machine learning theory. Chris was previously a member of the Google Display Ads team where he worked on ad selection and personalization for GMail and Google Maps. Prior to joining Google, Chris was teaching, studying and researching mathematics. Dr. Jeffrey Smith began his academic passion in the field of High Energy Accelerator Physics. His Ph.D. thesis was on the design of the International Linear Collider (ILC), a 22 mile-long electron-positron accelerator that will complement the discoveries being made at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. After Cornell, Jeff joined the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University to continue his work on the ILC and also to develop upgrade hardware for the LHC. After a successful career looking into the tiniest of inner-spaces Jeff decided to look up to the stars. Dr. Smith, now at the SETI Institute, develops data processing and planet detection algorithms for the Kepler and TESS Missions. Eking out planet signals in the Kepler data has proven to be a challenging and rewarding endeavor but looking toward the future, Dr. Smith is involved with developing new methods for use with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a new NASA planet finding mission to find Earth’s nearest cousins in a our galactic back yard.

A demonstration of the dual sun shades opening to expose the cameras to the sky. The sun shades prevent focused sunlight from damaging the cameras during the day.

A SETI Talk on 1I/`Oumuamua, the first known interstellar small body, possibly an asteroid which is probably coming from another planetary system. Its recent discovery by Pan-STARRS1 offers a rare opportunity to explore the planetary formation processes of other stars, and the effect of the interstellar environment on a planetesimal surface. Since its discovery, astronomers around the world have raced to use the most powerful ground-based and space-borne telescopes to collect information on its nature. Two astronomers, Meg Schwamb, astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and Matija Cuk, astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, will discuss the nature of 'Oumuamua, its color and shape in comparison with known small solar system bodies, as well as its origin derived from its extremely elongated shape and its orbit. They will show how its peculiarities seem to imply that 'Oumuamua is one of the most important discoveries of the decade in astronomy. Matija Cuk is a Research Scientist at the SETI Institute. He received his Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 2005. He uses computer simulations to study the past and present evolution of the orbits of the planets, moons and asteroids. His recent work focused on the origin of Earth's Moon, as well as the moons and rings of Saturn. In 2014 he was awarded the Harold Urey Prize for early career achievement from the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. Meg Schwamb is an assistant scientist at the Gemini Observatory based in Hilo, Hawai'i. Meg's research focuses on how planets and their building blocks form and evolve, applying ground-based surveys to probe our Solar System's small body reservoirs. She is also involved in the Planet Four citizen science projects, which enlists the public to help study the seasonal processes of the Martian south pole and map the distribution of ridges on the Martian mid-latitudes. Meg also serves as co-chair of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope's Solar System Science Collaboration. Meg was awarded the 2017 Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science from the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Science.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 and measured the brightness of 200,000 stars at unprecedented precision for over four years, with the prime mission goal of detecting Earth-sized exoplanets. Now after another four, Kepler’s final planet catalog is complete --- over 4,000 planet candidates have been found, with 50 of them possibly rocky and capable of having liquid water. For the first time in human history, we can calculate how common planets the same size and temperature as Earth are, a key component to SETI’s goal of figuring out how common life may be in the universe. The K2 mission began three years ago, and uses the Kepler spacecraft to stare at many different parts of the sky for 80 days at a time. A broad portion of the Astronomical community chooses what targets to observe, resulting in a wide variety of science, including supernovae, galaxies, stars, and of course exoplanets. K2 has found over 300 confirmed exoplanets and an additional 500 candidates. Some of these are likely to be habitable, and many of them are prime targets to be observed by future missions, such as the James Webb space telescope. We'll discuss what we may learn about these worlds over the next few decades, and what future missions are being planned to find planets to which our descendants may one day travel.

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The last officially recognized epoch on Earth, the Holocene, began at the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago. Now, climate change, and in particular humanity’s impact on climate change, has led to the suggestion that we are already in a new epoch, the Anthropocene. David’s most recent book, Earth in Human Hands, was named Best Science Book of 2016 by NPR’s Science Friday, explores how we can take on the possibly existential threat to life on Earth and consciously shape our planet’s future. David’s research focuses on climate evolution on Earth-like planets and potential conditions for life elsewhere. He is involved with several interplanetary spacecraft missions. In 2013 he was appointed as the inaugural Chair of Astrobiology at the U.S. Library of Congress where he studied the human impact on Earth systems and organized a public symposium on the Longevity of Human Civilization. His papers have been published in Nature, Science, and numerous other journals, and his popular writing has appeared in many newspapers and magazines. David has been the recipient of the Carl Sagan Medal for Public Communication of Planetary Science by the American Astronomical Society. He appears frequently as a science commentator on television, radio and podcasts, included as a regular host of StarTalk All Stars. He is also a musician and currently leads House Band of the Universe.

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program. FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program.

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program. FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program. Team 6: AI and the space sciences A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network. Team members: Morgan Henderson, Jack Collison, Zachary Werginz, and Justin Havlovitz.

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program. FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program. A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network. Team 5: Space Weather: Solar-Terrestrial Interactions Improve understanding of solar influence on Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere Team members: Bala Poduval, Burcu Kosar, George Gerules, and Casey Handmer

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program. FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program. A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network. Team 4: Space Weather: Solar Storm Prediction Discovering new relationships and agents to help predict major solar events Team members: Anamaria Berea, Dattaraj Dhuri, and Sean Mcgegor

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program. FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program. A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network. Team 3: Space Resources: Lunar Water & Volatiles Determine the location and most promising access points for vital lunar H2O, in terms of cost effectiveness and engineering constraints Team members: Dietmar Backes, Eleni Bohacek, Tony Dobrovolskis, Timothy Seabrook.

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program. FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program. A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network. Team 1: Planetary Defense: Long-Period Comets Provide more warning time for long-period comet impacts by applying deep learning to meteor shower observations. Team members: Antonio Ordonez, Jack Collison, Marcelo De Cicco, and Susana Zoghbi Team 2: Planetary Defense: Radar 3D Shape Modeling Develop a methodology to automate the backlog of neo radar imagery that requires shape modeling – and also improve the resolution of the result. Team members: Agata Rozek, Adam Cobb, Grace C. Young, and Sean Marshall

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program. FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program. A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network. Team 1: Planetary Defense: Long-Period Comets Provide more warning time for long-period comet impacts by applying deep learning to meteor shower observations. Team members: Antonio Ordonez, Jack Collison, Marcelo De Cicco, and Susana Zoghbi

NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL), hosted at the SETI Institute, kicked off its 2017 program. FDL is an applied artificial intelligence research accelerator and public/private partnership between NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute. The program tackles knowledge gaps in space science by pairing machine learning experts with astronomy and planetary science expertise. Interdisciplinary teams address tightly defined problems with meaningful application to the space program. A sixth team comprised of undergraduate students will address AI and the space sciences by exploring the application of AI as a breakthrough capability for the space program, informed by the experience of FDL and its partner network. * Because of technical issues on the day of recording, the audio quality is not very good.

The SETI Institute REU students Class of 2017 summarise their summer projects in exciting 5 minutes lightning talks!

Eclipse Triangle is a very beautiful poem written by Guy Petzall. It is performed by Madhulika Guhathakurta and Guy Petzall.

SETI Talks will return on Wednesday, July 12, with a program featuring Jill Tarter, Sarah Scoles, Elliot Gillum and more. In July, Pegasus Books will release ‘Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ by Sarah Scoles. Jill has been a pioneer in SETI research – it has been and still is her life’s work. Jill currently holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute, serves on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), is President Emeritus of the California Academy of Sciences Board of Trustees and continues to make groundbreaking impacts in the worlds of science, education and the arts. ‘Making Contact’ is Jill’s story.

The all-sky TESS mission will soon revolutionize our view of planets transiting the nearest, brightest stars to the Sun, just as the four-year survey by NASA's Kepler mission transformed our understanding of exoplanet demographics. Using the repurposed Kepler spacecraft, the ongoing K2 mission provides a natural transition from Kepler to TESS in terms of sky coverage, survey duration, and intensity of ground-based follow-up observations. For the past three years I have led a large, multi-institutional team to discover, follow up, validate, and characterize hundreds of new candidates and planets using data from K2. I will highlight some of our key results from the first two years of K2 data, and will conclude with a discussion of the path forward to future exoplanet discovery and characterization.

Dr. Gary H. Blackwood earned his BS, MS and PHD in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from MIT. He has been an employee at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA since 1988 and has worked on technology development for precision astronomical instruments and astrophysics missions including the Hubble Wide/Field Planetary Camera-2, the StarLight formation-flying interferometer, the Space Interferometry Mission and the Terrestrial Planet Finder. Since 2012 he has served as the Program Manager for the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program, managed by JPL for the Astrophysics Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate.

The Alpha Centauri star system is ideal to search for habitable planets by various observing techniques due to its proximity and wide range of stellar masses. Following the recent discovery of an Earth-size planet candidate located inside the Proxima Centauri habitable zone, Dr. Marois will discuss this remarkable discovery and the planet’s potential to find life. He will also present our current instrument project for the Gemini South observatory, TIKI, to discover similar planets around the two Sun-like pair located 15,000 AU from Proxima Centauri. The Alpha Centauri system is the prime target of the Breakthrough Starshot program, a project to send small quarter-size probes to take resolve images of these new worlds, and to prepare for Humanity’s first step into a new star system. Dr Marois completed his Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal in 2004. The main topic of his thesis work was to understand the limits in exoplanet imaging and to design innovating observing strategies. After his thesis, he did postdoctoral researches at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Univ. of California Berkeley and NRC. In 2008, while at NRC, he led the team that took the first image of another planetary system (HR 8799) using the Keck and Gemini telescopes. He is currently pursuing his research at the NRC Herzberg where he is part of the Gemini Planet Imager campaign, and leading the development of instruments for imaging Earth-like planets at Gemini South and at the TMT.

Given the detection of several thousand extrasolar planets, a very interesting question is whether or not they have moons or rings. In the cases of extrasolar Jupiter analogs, the gas giant may not support life, but a moon could be suitable. Exomoons or rings have not yet been detected with Kepler data, but the directly imaged Fomalhaut b is thought to be optically bright because of stellar light scattering off a circumplanetary dust ring (Kalas et al. 2008) and the distant (650 AU separation) 11 Jupiter mass planet HD 106906b has been possibly resolved in the optical using HST (Kalas et al. 2015). Also, the complex light curve of J1407 has been modeled as a circumplanetary ring system with radius 0.6 AU (Kenworthy & Mamajek 2015), and the 11 Jupiter mass planet FW Tau b displays accretion signatures (Bowler et al. 2014) as well as ALMA continuum emission from a circumplanetary disk (Kraus et al. 2014). In this talk I will review these results, and then describe international efforts to detect the possible moons and rings surrounding the massive planet Beta Pic b as its circumplanetary environment transits the star over a six-month period in 2017.

The women of the SETI Institute work every day to #BeBoldforChange. Extraordinary women are leading the way in all areas of the work we do: scientific research, STEM education, outreach, and finance and administration. The SETI Institute could not do the work it does without the incredible contributions of the women on our team. Make everyday International Women's Day.

Observations confirm that planet formation is a ubiquitous process that produces a diversity of planetary systems. However, a class of solar system analogs has yet to be identified among the thousands of currently known planets and candidates, the overwhelming majority of which are more easily detectable than direct counterparts of the Sun's worlds. To understand whether our solar system’s history was unusual and, more generally, to properly characterize the galactic population of extrasolar planets, we must identify how differences in formation environment translate into different planetary system architectures. In this talk, Dr. Murray-Clay will consider our solar system in the context of theoretical advances in planet formation driven by the study of extrasolar planets. Along the way, she will discuss several examples of physical processes operating at different stages of planet formation that imprint observable structures on the dynamical and compositional demographics of planetary systems.

Decades of planetary exploration have revealed widespread evidence for ancient fluvial activity on the surface of Mars, including deeply incised valleys, paleolake basins, and an extensive sedimentary rock record. Acquisition of high-resolution remote sensing data of the martian surface (e.g., images and topography) over the past 5-10 years have allowed for quantitative analysis of the large-scale sedimentary structures of martian sedimentary deposits. In this talk, Dr. Goudge will focus on a detailed study of the stratigraphic architecture and channel deposit geometries of the Jezero crater delta deposit on Mars. Results from this study are used to reconstruct a scenario for the evolution of the Jezero crater delta and paleolake in which it formed. This delta deposit is a representative example of fluvial stratigraphy on early Mars, and these results can help to improve our understanding of ancient martian fluvial activity.

Chance observations of stars as they pass behind planets have provided some of our most valuable data on the structure of planetary ring systems, beginning with the discovery of the uranian rings with the Kuiper Airborne Observatory in 1977. As a graduate student at Caltech in the 70s, I became involved first in studies of the dynamically-curious uranian rings at Mount Palomar and later in unraveling the story of the even more baffling ring arcs of Neptune. I will review some of the highlights of this early work, which led to my current involvement in the Cassini mission at Saturn, observing stellar occultations with the VIMS (Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer) instrument. Over 150 such occultations have been observed over the past 12 years, leading to the discovery and/or characterization of such novel features as self-gravity wakes, numerous density and bending waves, eccentric and inclined ringlets, `normal modes’ on gap edges and instances of `viscous overstability’ in denser regions of the rings. Our ring observations have also provided insights into the internal structure of Saturn itself.

Stars are the atoms of the universe. The process by which stars form is at the nexus of astrophysics since they are believed to be responsible for the re-ionization of the universe, they created the heavy elements, they play a central role in the formation and evolution of galaxies, and their formation naturally leads to the formation of planets. Whereas early work on star formation was based on the assumption that it is a quiescent process, it is now believed that turbulence plays a dominant role. In this overview, I shall discuss the evolution of our understanding of how stars form and current ideas about the stellar initial mass function, the rate of star formation, the formation of massive stars, the role of magnetic fields, and the formation of the first stars.

Present technology does not enable us to view images of these kilometer-sized infalling bodies, but the evaporation of gaseous products liberated from exocomets that occurs close to a star can potentially cause small disruptions in the ambient circumstellar disk plasma. For circumstellar disks that are viewed “edge-on” this evaporating material may be directly observed through transient (night-to-night and hour-to-hour) gas absorption features seen at rapidly changing velocities. Using high resolution spectrographs mounted to large aperture ground-based telescopes, we have discovered 15 young stars that harbor swarms of exocomets. In this lecture we briefly describe the physical attributes of comets in our own solar system and the instrumental observing techniques to detect the presence of evaporating exocomets present around stars with ages in the 10 – 100 Myr range. We note that this work has particular relevance to the dramatic fluctuations in the flux recorded towards “Tabby’s star” by the NASA Kepler Mission, that may be explained through the piling up of swarms of exocomets in front of the central star.

Asteroid impacts were a hazard to any life on the Hadean Earth. A traditional approach to geochemical models of the asteroid impactors uses the concentration of highly siderophile elements including the Pt-group in the silicate Earth. These elements occur in roughly chondritic relative ratios, but with absolute concentrations less than 1% chondrite. This veneer component implies addition of chondrite-like material with 0.3-0.7% mass of the Earth’s mantle or an equivalent planet-wide thickness of 5-20 km. The veneer thickness, 200-300 m, within the lunar crust and mantle is much less. The accretion of a large number of small bodies would provide comparable thicknesses to both bodies, as the effect of gravity is modest.

It has been scientifically clear for some time that the global community must decarbonize the energy and material system entirely by mid-century. In additional recent energy future scenarios have highlighted the pathways to reach this dramatic decarbonization objective on household to village to national and regional levels. The short -- few decade -- time needed for this transition demands a rapid scale- up on current and near-term technologies, while the long-term complete energy sector transition opens the door for an innovation and industrial transformation program. In this talk both the near- and long-term energy vision will be explored in the context of a clean energy economy, and the social and equity implications.

Dr. Ricker is the PI of the TESS Mission which will explore nearby stars for exoplanets. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. In its two-year prime survey mission, TESS will monitor more than 200,000 bright stars in the solar neighborhood for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. This first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. TESS stars will typically be 30-100 times brighter than those surveyed by the Kepler satellite; thus, TESS planets will be far easier to characterize with follow-up observations. For the first time it will be possible to study the masses, sizes, densities, orbits, and atmospheres of a large cohort of small planets, including a sample of rocky worlds in the habitable zones of their host stars. An additional data product from the TESS mission will be full frame images (FFI) with a cadence of 30 minutes. These FFI will provide precise photometric information for every object within the 2300 square degree instantaneous field of view of the TESS cameras. These objects will include more than 1 million stars and bright galaxies observed during sessions of several weeks. In total, more than 30 million objects brighter than magnitude I=16 will be precisely photometered during the two-year prime mission. In principle, the lunar-resonant TESS orbit could provide opportunities for an extended mission lasting more than a decade, with data rates in excess of 100 Mbits/s. An extended survey by TESS of regions surrounding the North and South Ecliptic Poles will provide prime exoplanet targets for characterization with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as well as other large ground-based and space-based telescopes of the future. A NASA Guest Investigator program is planned for TESS. The TESS legacy will be a catalog of the nearest and brightest main-sequence stars hosting transiting exoplanets, which should endure as the most favorable targets for detailed future investigations. TESS is currently targeted for launch in late 2017 as a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission

Jill Tarter explains how SETI Institute used the Allen Telescope Array to search “Tabby’s Star” for signals of technological life. Make a gift to support our search for life beyond Earth—your gift will be doubled! https://teamseti.org/ddforms/support-seti-ye-4

Aaron Berliner is the Science PI on a recently funded NASA Ames SIF project to investigate Mars habitability. He will talk about the development of the "extreme conditions" Crucible environmental chamber. The project is a collaboration between NASA Ames Research Center, UC Berkeley, and Autodesk to build a system that will allow for biology experiments under extreme conditions as a step towards space synthetic biology. Aaron will talk about how the chamber will be able to carry out repeatable and reliable biological experiments under conditions sufficiently analogous to the harsh environment. He will address the following perceived scientific needs: (1) How to reliably replicate Martian conditions (2) How to source and filter biology of interest (3) How to characterize and engineer useful biological phenomena under Martian conditions (4) How to scale experiments sufficient to characterize enough biology to form a basis for continued engineering. The Crucible chamber will meet these scientific needs by utilizing state-of-the-art additive manufacturing technology, cutting-edge software architecture, and internet-of-things capable devices to produce a smaller, cheaper, extensible, distributable, scalable system for experimental space biology.