LVAAS General Meeting at Muhlenberg College

Trumbower Science Building, 2400 Chew St., Allentown, PA 18104

Sunday February 1, 3 p.m.

 

Presenter is in Person

 

"Europa and NASA's Europa Clipper Mission: 

The Search for Habitability within our Solar System"

    

Featuring Bruce Ruggeri,

NASA Solar System Ambassador

 

Synopsis: The search for potentially habitable worlds within our Solar System capable of harboring microbial life leads to the subsurface ocean worlds of the outer Solar System, and especially Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, and Jupiter’s moon Europa. These hypotheses are based upon data available from ground based and space -based observatories (Hubble, Keck, JWST) and the Cassini and Galileo Missions to Saturn and Jupiter, respectively. This presentation will have two major parts. The first will examine the available observational, radar, gravitometric, and magnetographic data and hypotheses supporting the potential for habitable conditions in the presumptive subsurface ocean of Europa, and the energy sources and convective processes impacting the moon’s geology and subsurface dynamics. The second part of this presentation will focus on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission launched in October 2024 to address the fundamental questions of Europa’s habitability. Europa Clipper is the largest and most technologically sophisticated mission launched by NASA. Details of the spacecraft’s design, its scientific mission objectives, and instrument package to address these objectives, and the unique engineering and orbital dynamics to enable Europa Clipper to conduct its 3.5 year, 49 flybys discovery mission of Europa while enduring one of the harshest radiation environments in our Solar System will be discussed, along with other aspects of the mission currently en route to the Jovian system for an April 2030 arrival. If successful, the scientific discoveries of NASA’s Clipper mission to Europa, and that of the ESA’s JUICE “sister” flyby mission to Ganymede and Callisto launched in April 2023, will make the decades of the 2030 and beyond ones of unprecedented space exploration discovery, likely answering the fundamental question of habitability on alien worlds within our own Solar System.

Bruce Ruggeri, PhD has spent his career in basic and applied oncology and cancer research for 32 years throughout his tenure in academia and the pharmaceutical industry, the latter primarily in target-directed small molecule oncology drug discovery and translational pharmacology. He has worked in this capacity for several biotech and pharmaceutical companies, including Teva, Incyte, Prelude, and ModifiBio Sciences. Although his professional career has been in the biomedical sciences and cancer drug discovery, he has been an astronomy, planetary science, and space exploration enthusiast for five decades. He organized regional speaking events and volunteer outreach activities in the past for The Planetary Society (a member since its founding in 1980) for many years. He is a member of the National Space Society, and a longstanding member and the Program Chairperson and Scholarship Coordinator for the Chester County Astronomical Society (CCAS) based in West Chester PA. In February of 2025, Bruce became a NASA Solar System Ambassador and is actively engaged in volunteer outreach and educational activities to those interested in astronomy, planetary science and space exploration.

 

Prospective new members who wish to attend the meeting should email membership@lvaas.org.