StarFest Denver 2019

A re-creation of the day the Earth stood still as it watched humans walk on the Moon and realize a dream of exploration bridging both cultures and time. Through remastered period video and images we’ll relive the Cold War, the Space Race, the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Projects, and witness the Apollo 11 journey, the Eagle’s landing, and humanity’s first steps onto another world.

Learn about the vintage technology that put humans on the Moon and that Smartphone in your hand.  

Join spacecraft engineers Dr. Christopher Grasso and Pieter Kallemeyn on a mission to divert
the asteroid Bennu from striking Earth. They will talk about the very real danger of asteroid
impacts and the technologies available to prevent catastrophe. During the session, they will
simulate an asteroid diversion using nuclear weapons and a variation of the OSIRIS-REx
spacecraft currently visiting Bennu.

We are in the midst of a golden age in the discovery and characterization of exoplanets. Dr. Carpenter will talk about the incredible successes we have had in finding planets, using the transit method, with NASA’s Kepler/K2 and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and our plans for using the microlensing technique on WFIRST when it launches in the mid-2020’s.

Once exoplanets are found using these survey missions, we need to follow-up with observations from other observatories on the ground and in-space, to get additional data to characterize their properties. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been used to confirm candidate exoplanets, find some on its own, and perhaps most importantly, obtain some of the first detections of specific elements in the atmospheres of select exoplanets. HST was the first to make direct measurements of sodium and helium in an exoplanet atmosphere, has seen an evaporating hydrogen-atmosphere, detected oxygen and carbon in an atmosphere, and made critical observations of the Trappist-1 planets that indicate at least 3 of its 6 planets have compact atmospheres like Earth, Venus, and Mars in our own solar system. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to observe fainter and more distant solar systems in a broader range of infrared colors and greatly increase the number of planets studied in this fashion. Dr. Carpenter will summarize what has been done with HST to-date and plans for future observations with JWST.

We humans have always been explorers. Our species was born from our deep-rooted need to
learn more about the world around us – from the need to find that next source of food to, even if
just occasionally, discover out of pure curiosity what is over that hill or to figure out why that
stick over there looks a bit weird. We are also artists, almost innately compelled to express our
experiences and feelings and inner imaginings, be it through the sung word or the pigmented
picture. Art and exploration have been long and intimate partners, each inspiring the other
through history as we expanded the frontiers of new lands and pressed the boundaries of
human activity with novel technologies.

Contemporary visions of aeronautical advances and space exploration portrayed in sweeping
murals by Robert McCall stir the human spirit just as much as scenes of majestic beauty
captured in paintings of the 19th century American frontier by artists like Thomas Cole, Albert
Bierstadt, and Frederick Edwin Church. From its beginnings before the era of telescopic
astronomy to its inspirational and influential role during the dawn of the space age, space art
allows us to see the unseeable and to go to places we cannot yet go or to places (or times) we
could never go. It may be centuries before our technology allows some lucky and courageous
humans to stand rapt admiring the epic landscape of an Earth-like moon around a gas giant
planet orbiting a distant star light-years away, but astronomical artists can take us there today.

Since 1992 when the first exoplanet detection was confirmed, we have come to know thousands
of exoplanets! I’ll describe some of the techniques used to discover them. Then we’ll take a tour
through the galaxy to explore some of the weird, and wild worlds known today.

Michael Carroll has camped on a volcano in Antarctica, wandered the glaciers of Iceland, and scoped out the alien landscapes of Death Valley, all in the name of art and science. Now, he has combined those experiences into a novel (his 29th book) about Saturn’s mysterious geyser-ridden moon Enceladus. Come see the wilds of Mount Erebus and ponder the wilderness of places like Enceladus and Europa in this richly illustrated adventure into the future.

Even before NASA and Star Trek existed, filmmakers looked to the aeronautical industry, organizations involved in rocket experiments, and astronomers to aid them in depicting flights to other worlds. The Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials treated audiences to journeys in rocketships to meet up with those “new civilizations” we’re so familiar with today, with both good and bad results. Movies such as Frau im Mond and Things to Come primed us for more adventures beyond the Earth with productions like Captain Video, Tom Corbett, Destination Moon, Forbidden Planet and countless others. Art departments (with wildly varying budgets) designed sets and props and spaceship models. The practice continued with Star Trek, which first aired over fifty years ago, and barely eight years after NASA itself was formed. This presentation will examine many of the concepts developed for Star Trek, both human and alien, with particular emphasis on their scientific and technological plausibility, even in the 24th century. Developments in real launch vehicles, space stations and distant planetary spacecraft have all inspired the look of their future versions. Research into new materials and processes, medicines, sensors, computers and energy systems have likewise driven the look of future handheld equipment. While the real world has been quickly catching up to what we have designed in the Star Trek universe, we continue to learn and ask questions. And imagine.

As part of ScienceFest we're bringing in nine scientists from around the country to talk about planets, galaxies, telescopes, space art, neutrinos, meteorites and more!  We know people always have lots of questions for our science guest speakers, so we'll have the popular "Ask a Scientist" table set up from 1 to 4 each day.  Get to meet our guests on an informal basis and get your science questions answered! 

NASA’s WFIRST (Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope) is the top large mission priority from
the 2010 Astrophysics Decadal Survey – New Worlds, New Horizons. I’ll talk about the mission
and its hardware and then discuss some of the exciting science WFIRST is designed to achieve
using its very wide field. By mapping large sections of the universe, WFIRST data will help
determine the growth of structure and expansion history of the universe and the impacts of dark
energy and dark matter on the future of the universe. Additionally, WFIRST observations will
make progress toward answering the question of “Are we alone” by both completing the census
of exoplanets and directly imaging and detecting the atmospheres of several exoplanets.

This panel will discuss mankind's greatest achievement in the history of mankind and that is Apollo 11's moon landing on July 20, 1969. This was the first time that two men had actually landed and walked around doing scientific experiments on another celestial body other than the earth. This July 20 marks the 50th anniversary of this historic event - 600 million people watched it on TV all over the world and crime was nearly non-existence. The panel will cover how significant Apollo 11 was to us scientifically, socially and culturally. It will also cover the mission and its astronauts (one of the Apollo 11 astronauts the panelist met himself) its spacecraft, scientific instruments and experiments, behind the scenes and insights and when  they nearly aborted the landing.

The panelist - a NASA Apollo mission expert - has met 28 astronauts of whom ten were on Apollo missions. He has been a member of the National Space Society for 17 years and spoken on man in space and space exploration topics and events 15 times. Where were you 50 years ago this July 20 when Neil Armstrong said "That's one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind"? Come and celebrate mankind's greatest achievement ever. Presented by Tim Miller.

It's Mars Mania time at ScienceFest! 2018 was an exciting year for Mars Exploration. In May,
the latest NASA Mars mission, INSIGHT (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations,
Geodesy and Heat Transport), lifted off from Vandenburg, California. Seven months later it
arrived at Mars, survived a 12,000 MPH descent thru the atmosphere, and landed safely in the
Elysium Planitia region just north of the equator. This spacecraft was designed, built and tested
right here in Colorado at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Pieter Kallemeyn, leader of the
Lockheed Martin team that performs mission support for this spacecraft, will give a presentation
on what it takes to build, launch and land such a complex spacecraft, and the latest pictures and
science discoveries from the surface of Mars. In addition, Pieter will give an update on the other
rovers and orbiters exploring Mars, the hazards of the dust storm that encompassed the planet
for most of last year, and a preview of the next Mars missions scheduled for 2020 and beyond.

Come hear about the latest exploration of the outer solar system from a scientist who was on
the team!

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft celebrated New Years Eve 2018 in a very unique way – by
encountering the most distant world ever explored! This world, nicknamed Ultima Thule, is
located 4.1 billion miles from the Earth in a region of our solar system known as the Kuiper Belt.
Ultima Thule is so far from the Sun it’s unlikely to have been modified by it, and is thus remains
unchanged since its formation 4.6 billion years ago. By exploring this small distant world we
hope to learn how it formed, and by extension how the building blocks of all planets are formed,
as well as what conditions were like in this distant part of the solar system as it condensed from
the solar nebula.

Movies are wonderful places for us to suspend our disbelief and dream of other worlds and possibilities. However, if we believed everything we saw in movies, we would think meteorites are explosive, radioactive, ooze alien life, or even give us super powers. Of course, Superman might beg to differ. Yet the science revealed by meteorites is almost as exciting as the fiction. Like a modern Indiana Jones, meteorite scientists travel all over the world from deserts of Northwest Africa to the frozen plains of Antarctica collecting samples. These little rocks from space tell us about our origins, and possibly what lies ahead. Join me as we discuss the fantasy and reality of meteorite science through science fiction and cutting edge research as we address some of the myths and look at the exciting realities behind these fascinating space rocks.

SPECIAL:  Black Hole Update
Carolyn Collins Petersen and Ken Carpenter
Black holes play big roles in science fiction, and astronomers know they really do exist in real life.  Not only do we see evidence of them in Hubble images, but most recently, a virtual telescope the size of planet Earth observed a massive one in the heart of a distant galaxy. The image of that black hole is the first-ever direct view of the event horizon around a black hole. Come find out the latest news about this image, what it tells us about black holes, and the Event Horizon Telescope that gathered the data!

When the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched in April 1990, it had a design lifetime of 15 years. Thanks to both good design and construction (let’s not talk about that pesky mirror – after all, we fixed that!) and to a series of 5 post-deployment servicing missions, the operational lifetime has been extended from 15 to 20 to 25 years and beyond. We now expect HST to last well into the 2020’s and provide complementary ultraviolet and optical observations to the primarily infrared observations of at least the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) after its launch in 2021, and possibly of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which is scheduled for launch in the mid-2020’s. Dr. Carpenter will discuss the current health and scientific capabilities of HST and how the HST Project is managing it, via “life-extension initiatives”, special observing programs/strategies, and other means, to ensure viability well into the 2020’s, without excessively limiting current science productivity – a trade that is complex and difficult – though not impossible for true “rocket scientists”!

Denver Space Society panel: James Short, Jim Barnard, and Bennett Rutledge
This long-time space exploration society focuses on the future of human spaceflight
through the solar system and beyond. Come participate in a lively discussion about
where humans are going next!

As the late Stephen Hawking told us, for humanity to survive the next millennium (1000
years), we must become at least a two planet species. With climate issues, pollution
and conflict on Earth and comets and asteroids threatening to wipe us out, the time has
come for us to understand the why behind our dreams of space travel and adventure.
Please join us for a discussion of the economics of space colonization, asteroid mining,
and more!

As part of ScienceFest we're bringing in nine scientists from around the country to talk about planets, galaxies, telescopes, space art, neutrinos, meteorites and more!  We know people always have lots of questions for our science guest speakers, so we'll have the popular "Ask a Scientist" table set up from 1 to 4 each day.  Get to meet our guests on an informal basis and get your science questions answered! 

Neutrinos have been snatching up Nobel prizes since the 80s, and they have been making appearances in our favorite Sci-Fi shows for just as long. But what ARE they? Nicknamed "ghost particles", neutrinos have *almost* no mass, no electric charge, and can travel through a light-year thick piece of lead with a 50/50 shot of making it out unscathed as a completely different particle. Let's call the Ghostbusters and crack this case wide open.