Dr. Julie Castillo-Rogez will be joining us from JPL/Cal Tech. She is the science lead for Near Earth Asteroid Scout (NEAScout), a CubeSat mission that launched with Artemis-1 on the maiden flight of NASA's new Space Launch System. The NEAScout packs all the capability required from a regular spacecraft into a volume equivalent to two gallons. NEAScout will flyby a small asteroid in 2025 and gather information about its physical properties and rotation. Castillo-Rogez started her career at the Jet Propulsion in 2001 and has been involved in several space missions, including the Cassini orbiter that explored the system of Saturn between 2004-2017 and the Dawn mission that explored the asteroid belt between 2011-2018.
We're also excited to announce that our friends from the Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers group will be joining us and have telescopes set up (weather permitting), so we can view Saturn and Jupiter!