Inside story of the Mars Rover mission
The inside story of the Mars Rover mission will be a focus of UTAS Research Week in Launceston this week.
Professor Paulo de Souza, who worked on the Rover robot’s rock analysis equipment, will give a humorous presentation of the 2004 quest to determine whether there was water on the planet on Thursday at 1.15pm in lecture theatre five at the Newnham UTAS campus.
"I’ll show a short animated film beginning with the rocket taking off at 24,000 km an hour, the beginning of the seven month journey to Mars" he said.
Prof de Souza will also discuss his life research journey beginning as a boy fascinated by the dream of working on Mars exploration: "I want to tell children that they can have a dream and achieve it."
Prof de Souza will also give a presentation on the new SenseT project being funded by the state and federal governments.
Other Research Week events include:
Demonstrations of Profs’ Phonics, three apps to teach young children about phonics, developed by Education Faculty staff;
A presentation on building disaster-resilient communities by Professor Doug Paton, who advised after the recent New Zealand earthquakes;
A session on the architecture research journey of the Head of the School of Architecture and Design, Professor Stephen Loo.
The fun part of the week will be Rapid Research, a free-for-all session where researchers at any level are allocated three minutes to describe their research – and then repair to the Seafarer’s Bar at the Australian Maritime College.
Schools on the Inveresk campus will run Fast Furious Future, where six artists and architects discuss their research with the aid of 20 slides at 20 seconds a slide.
The full Research Week program is available at www.utas.edu.au/research