Our guest speaker is Josh Hopkins from Lockheed-Martin Space Systems Company in Littleton, CO. The title of his talk will be “The Plymouth Rock mission: Human Exploration of the Asteroids”.
In 2010 the President announced that sending astronauts to explore nearby asteroids will be NASA’s next goal. Lockheed Martin has been studying how to perform such a challenging mission. In this talk, engineer Josh Hopkins will explain what we know – and don’t know – about these asteroids, and how astronauts can visit them to learn more.
Hopkins leads a team of engineers who develop plans and concepts for a variety of future human exploration missions, including visits to asteroids and Lagrange points. He is responsible for the Plymouth Rock mission study for human exploration of Near Earth Asteroids using the Orion crew exploration vehicle. In a similar capacity he previously led Lockheed Martin’s technical team to determine mission capabilities for the Altair lunar lander.
During his 14 years with Lockheed Martin, Hopkins has focused most of his efforts developing space transportation systems and launch vehicles. He began as a trajectory analyst, first on the Athena commercial launch vehicle program, and then in a similar role for the Atlas V launch vehicle. Later, he became responsible for vehicle sizing and system design for a variety of reusable launch vehicle design projects for NASA and the United States Air Force. He has since helped design a variety of expendable and reusable launch vehicles, government and commercial crew transportation spacecraft, and robotic and human exploration vehicles such as lunar landers.
Hopkins received the AIAA Summerfied Book Award in 2003 for coauthoring two editions of the International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems and the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Stellar Award in 2007. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois.
The observatory doors will open at 7:00pm and the talk will start at 7:30pm. Weather permitting after the presentation, visitors will be invited to look through our large telescope at various celestial objects.
Public star nights are held the third Friday of each month (except July, when we are closed for annual maintenance). No reservations are necessary for these nights. Just come and join us for the talk and some observing afterwards.
If you have any questions, please call the observatory information line at 970-613-7793 or check the LTO web site at: www.starkids.org
