Lava Worlds to Living Worlds: How a NASA Mission Sparked the Search for Life Beyond Earth
Award-winning astrophysicist Natalie Batalha served as the scientific lead for NASA's highly successful Kepler mission, which discovered more than 2,500 planets around other stars. When the Kepler space telescope retired in October 2018, Natalie left NASA to join the faculty at UC Santa Cruz, returning to where she had received her Ph.D. in astrophysics in 1997. On the Kepler mission, she identified planets that might be able to sustain life and led the analysis that yielded the discovery in 2011 of the first confirmed rocky planet outside our solar system. In 2017, Time magazine named her among the 100 most influential people in the world.
Show time: 7:30 PM, doors 7:00 PM
Tickets: FREE
Event website: www.specialevents.ucsc.edu
