Dartmouth Events

Exploration of Mars has been a fascination for generations, inspiring books, movies, and songs. Since the late 20th century, human exploration with probes, landers, and now rovers, have yielded a dramatic increase our knowledge of this planet, but engineering these complex interplanetary missions has not been without failure -- only about one third of these efforts ends in successful missions. Come to this month's Science Pub to learn what these successful explorations, such as the Mars Exploration and Mars Science Laboratory rovers, have taught us about Mars' past, whether life could have evolved on the red planet, and where future missions might explore to find evidence of life.
Discussion Leaders:

Wil Leavitt:
Leavitt and his lab group study how microbes have dramatically changed the composition of Earths' atmosphere over the past few billion years, and how they may change it going foreward. By understanding how microbes influence major elemental cycles — from the surface ocean to boiling hot springs — they seek to understand the signatures life can leave behind for explorers to find millions to billions of years later. Leavitt is an assistant professor in Earth Sciences, and adjunct in Biology and Chemistey. He is trained as an isotope geochemist and microbiologist. He holds a BA from Hampshire College in Microbial Evolution, a Masters in Oranismic and Evolutionary Biology and PhD from Harvard in Earth & Planetery Sciencs. His group currently works on a variety of topics from microbial methane formation in the surface oceans to microbial survival in boiling acidic waters.

Marisa Palucis
Marisa Palucis is a geomorphologist and planetary scientist at Dartmouth College in the Earth Science department. She uses sediment transport processes to "back-calculate" past environments on Earth and Mars. She is especially interested in the timing, duration, and extent of large lakes and oceans in Mars' early history. Marisa started as an assistant professor in July 2017, after finishing a post-doc at Caltech and her PhD at UC Berkeley. She also loves to trail run, rock climb, and explore the upper valley with her husband and son.