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AIAA Pickering Lecture to focus on Phoenix Mars Mission

Lecture open to public; full scale, working model of Phoenix Mars Rover to be displayed

September 2, 2008 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is pleased to announce that this year's William H. Pickering Lecture will honor the Phoenix Mars Mission. The lecture will be presented on September 10 at 6:00 p.m. as part of the SPACE 2008 Conference and Exposition at the San Diego Convention Center. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The lecture will be presented by Peter Smith, principal investigator and project leader, from the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz., and Barry Goldstein, project manager, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

As a prelude to the lecture, a full-scale, working model of the Phoenix Mars Rover will be on display in the main foyer of the San Diego Convention Center from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on September 10. Staff from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be on hand to answer questions about the Rover and the Phoenix mission.

The NASA Phoenix Mars Mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral on August 4, 2007 for the purpose of studying the history of water on the Martian surface, as well as evaluating the ability of the Martian surface to support life. The mission landed on Mars on May 26, 2008, and since then has not only transmitted thousands of images of the Martian landscape for analysis by the mission team, but has confirmed the presence of water on Mars.

The Pickering lecture series honors Dr. William Pickering, former director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his initiation and leadership of America's unmanned scientific space program, from the launch of Explorer I in 1958, through the development of the Viking Orbiters and the Voyager outer planet and interstellar missions.

The Space 2008 Conference and Exposition is co-chaired by the NASA Joint Propulsion Laboratory and the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Sponsors of the conference are Orbital Sciences Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation and Raytheon Company. Additional sponsorship is provided by United Space Alliance, Stellar Solutions, Inc., The Aerospace Corporation, and ATK. Additional support for the conference is provided by the AIAA Technical Activities Committed Space and Missile Group, California Space Authority, and Jacobs Engineering. Space News is the conference's media sponsor, with additional media sponsorship by Aerospace America.

AIAA advances the state of aerospace science, engineering, and technical leadership. Headquartered in suburban Washington, D.C., the Institute serves over 35,000 members in 65 regional sections and 79 countries. AIAA membership is drawn from all levels of industry, academia, private research organizations, and government. For more information, visit www.aiaa.org.

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