Where is humanity headed in space and how do we get there? Darlene Lim is part of the Planetary Systems team at NASA where she seeks to enable discovery and science on other planets when our explorers are humans as well as robots.

She’ll talk about the Moon, asteroids, and Mars; and the research she’s doing on earth to make human exploration possible in extreme environments in Deep Space. Her team uses “analogs”, i.e. places on earth that approximate a location in our solar system. For example, the Mojave desert is a great place to work on Moon related issues; underwater environments approximate the hostility of space and more.

She will describe the Pavilion Lake Research Project and why it has become one of NASA’s premier analogs. This should be a fascinating look at space research and human exploration.