Perseverance Facts: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/technology/
Engineering the Perseverance Rover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqqaW8DCc-I
Europa Clipper Mission: https://europa.nasa.gov/
Space Radiation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpNa4u997xA
X-Ray Spectrometer: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/pixl/for-scientists/

James Chinn's Bio:
James Chinn grew up in Davis, CA where physics was his favorite subject in high school! He took two physics classes and read a lot of pop physics books (only when there was no Harry Potter to read of course). He was really interested in the weird things that happen at the atomic scale. Outside of school, he played trumpet in a jazz band, and spent my summers sweating all day as a tennis camp counselor. When college came around, he decided to focus on applications of physics, rather than delve deeper into the theory. Engineering seemed like a good way to approach this. Chinn went to school at UCLA and studied mechanical engineering with a side focus on electrical engineering. During his senior year of school, he took a nuclear engineering class and got along well with my professor, who happened to be a space radiation scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At the end of his senior year, this professor asked for a resume, and in the fall, began working at JPL with the space radiation team! Over the past couple years, he's moved around doing radiation and electrical engineering for scientific instruments on several missions, including the Perseverance Mars rover and the Europa Clipper spacecraft. "Every day we’re working with some of the same basic physics we learned back in high school, and it’s a lot of fun!"

About the Talk:
The talk will be about the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)! As you might expect, physics is used every day to build spacecraft and the scientific instruments they carry. The talk will cover two ongoing missions: the Europa Clipper mission exploring Jupiter’s water ice moon, Europa, and the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover which recently landed successfully. The talk will examine some of the scientific goals of these spacecraft, and details on the physics. The talk will cover how radiation trapped in Jupiter’s magnetic field charges up spacecraft and can cause electrical arcs that damage the spacecraft electronics. Additionally, some of the physics that allows the X-Ray spectrometer on the Perseverance rover to work, as well as the electrostatics used to design the instrument will be discussed in the talk.


Zoom Link:
https://zoom.us/j/98861089645?pwd=ckNVWFUrSXIraWlnM3BqU21lZGt6QT09

Meeting ID: 988 6108 9645
Passcode: Physics!



Document Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/114Udvfm1xlPdhJ6zEKWsvCixhHF6tCxPSCGpZp2dWO0/edit?usp=sharing