This past week, JMU was
fortunate enough to host NASA Engineering Manager Jill Prince for a series of talks.
Ms. Prince has a deep
history in astronomical research, joining NASA Langley in 2001 and supporting
the flight mechanics team for the years that led up to the Phoenix Mars landing
in 2008. Afterwards, she served in an array of NASA
administration positions for many years, eventually leading her to be appointed
to Manager of the System Engineering Office in 2015. Ms. Prince has also been awarded a number of
accolades, including the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and the Women in
Aerospace Achievement Award. She first
spoke at Wilson Hall on Thursday to the general James Madison student body, and
then again to the JMU Physics & Astronomy Department on Friday.
The NASA engineer opened
up her talk discussing the prospects, goals, questions, history, and philosophy
of NASA. She then went into the more
current Mars-based operations, such as MAVEN, the Mars Orbiter Mission, and the Curiosity Rover. She also discussed future missions,
such as perfecting the Trace Gas Orbiter and the ExoMars Rover.
Ms. Prince then went on
to discuss how NASA plans to continuously study and eventually land advanced
systems on Mars, starting with Earth-based systems and then slowly reaching
farther towards the Red Planet with satellites and such. The focus of these steps, Prince explained, is
to make future missions to Mars self-sustaining Earth-independent, which
involves mining asteroids and increased solar tech. These processes also include fulling mapping
the topography of Mars, cataloging the materials available at its surface, and understanding
Martian weather patterns, such as dust storms.
Also displayed in her
presentation were the rockets, Block 1 and Block 2, to be used on the eventual
manned mission to Mars. Block 1 is meant
to transport people, while Block 2 is meant to transport the majority of the
equipment to Mars. She also discussed
the sophisticated Orion spacecraft, which will be used to land the astronauts
on Mars, and the various challenges it faces, most notably Mar’s thin
atmosphere and rugged terrain. Many of
the other challenges she discussed involved protecting our astronauts, such as
radiation poisoning and providing/creating enough fuel for the trip home.
Many thanks to Ms. Prince
for taking a break from her astronomically important schedule to talk to us
here at JMU!
