The Columbia Memorial Space Center will be holding Space Expo 2015 at the Long Beach Comic Con with panels featuring top aerospace industry notables. There will also be interactive exhibits for robotics, 3D printing, and a space suit. The panels and exhibits are built on the premise that fans of science fiction, fantasy, and comic books are likely also to be fans of actual space exploration. The goal, according to Columbia Memorial Space Center President Ben Dickow, is to “create a fandom for science that will grow and support the next wave of space explorers and scientific progress.” With a full line-up of panels and exhibits, the new Space Expo 2015 gives attendees yet more exiting options to add to their to-do list.
Space Expo 2015 Panels will include:
- Sci-Fi Space vs. Reality Andre Bormanis, the director of scientific research for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and the science consultant for Star Trek shows, discusses the age-old topic of just how much Science Fiction is based on actual Science.
- Planning a Martian Roadtrip with Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. What does it take to plan a ‘road trip’ on Mars? Experts will discuss driving from Acidalia Planitia to Schiaparelli crater, as astronaut Mark Watney does in the book The Martian.
- The Dawn Mission Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will analyze the Mars Dawn mission, discuss Ceres, the dwarf planet and the asteroid Vesta.
- New Horizons and Pluto Discovered in 1930, Pluto remained a tiny burry point of light until the arrival of the New Horizons spacecraft. With this history making flyby of this dwarf planet and its moons, humans have for the first time seen their surfaces and detected their tenuous atmospheres. After a short history of Pluto observations, the latest information from this mission will be presented.
- Crazy Engineering From supersonic parachutes to electric propulsion, the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are coming up with innovative ideas to explore our solar system and beyond. This panel will discuss current and next-generation space missions, and the technology that makes it all possible. It only looks crazy, but it’s result of reasoned engineering. Missions on the panel include: Dawn mission at Ceres, Juno mission to Jupiter, Europa mission, InSight and Mars Cube One (MarCO). Based on JPL’s web series Crazy Engineering.
These panels all look wonderful. Got any you prever?
