Space Awareness webinar: Cassini’s mission to Saturn
Location: Online
Organizer: Space Awareness
Type of event: webinar
Target groups: primary and secondary school teachers and students, educational authorities, researchers, etc.
Topic: Space missions
Theme: Our Wonderful Universe
Language of event: English

The webinar will take place in the Scientix online meeting room on the 2nd of June 2017 at 18:00 CEST, Brussels time. After registration, you will receive an e-mail with instructions. NB: Places are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis!

Register now by filling out the application form!

In just few months from today, on September 15, the Cassini spacecraft will end its mission with a spectacular fall in Saturn, after having completed over 300 revolutions around the gas giant planet, since July 2004. During its mission, Cassini impressed the scientific community and the whole world with a chain of discoveries regarding the nature and the dynamics of Saturn and its moons (e.g. Titan, Enceladus). We will try to follow Cassini’s 17-year adventure and focus on the ways it advanced our knowledge regarding our Solar System and the how it introduced new, multi-level challenges in the field of Space Awareness.  

The webinar will be held by Dr. Nick Sergis, a Researcher at the Office of Space Research and Technology of the Academy of Athens since 2006. He is a member of the Cassini/MIMI Scientific Team, the IAASARS Space Research and Technology Group, the Uranus Pathfinder Consortium and the editorial board of Annales Geophysicae. Being an active researcher with numerous papers published in prestigious scientific journals and invited speaker to conferences and seminars, Nick has been continuously serving as a reviewer for proposals submitted for funding to NASA and many scientific journals of his field.

In 2008, he was elected “best reviewer in the field” by the editorial board of Annales Geophysicae and in 2009 he received the “NASA Group Achievement Award” as a member of the Cassini/MIMI Team. Dr. Sergis is a co-leader of the Plasma Radial Transport Team, selected for funding by the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in 2014. His research interests include Space and Planetary Physics, Magnetospheric Data Analysis with emphasis on the Outer Planets and their moons, Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling, and Solar Wind Dynamics. He participates in a number of ongoing scientific collaborations with institutes from the USA, the UK, Germany and Argentina. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the European Geosciences Union (EGU) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Before the webinar, check out Space Awareness resources related to the topic:

- Countdown to Cassini's grand finale Space Scoop article

- Know your planets resource

Image: Illustration of Cassini Spacecraft's Grand Finale Dive
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech