Dr. Sue Smrekar Speaks at the CATS Roundtable Radio Show

Interview Highlights

Speaks about the recent discovery on Mars. “It gives us evidence of liquid water on Mars today…we had known water has flowed on Mars but billions of years ago.”

Speaks about the next mission to Mars in March that will get there on September 28, 2016. The purpose is to “study the inside of Mars” including its internal temperature and structure. This mission has been planned for 5 years.

About Dr. Sue Smrekar

Dr. Sue Smrekar, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena Calif., is the deputy project scientist for NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. She helps coordinate the efforts of dozens of researchers working on the mission’s eight scientific investigations. She was the project scientist for NASA’s Deep Space 2 to deliver two small probes to Mars in 1999. Also while at JPL since 1992, she helped plan the science goals and capabilities for an advanced Mars rover. Besides Mars, one of her principal topics of research has been the volcanism on Venus, based on data from NASA’s Magellan mission.

Dr. Smrekar says, “Every time a new mission explores a planet, we discover things we had never imaged. That challenges our understanding of how planets work, and makes us reevaluate our understanding of the Earth.”

Dr. Smrekar was educated at Brown University and Southern Methodis University.